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Created: Feb 20, 2008
Updated: Nov 19, 2009
Membership: Open
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Chris Jordan, Photographs of Consumption
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From the Bill Moyers Journal website:
Photographic Artist Chris Jordan turns the statistics of consumerism into palpable images in his new photo series.
Former corporate attorney turned photographic artist, Chris Jordan explains that he never used to be focused upon making a social statement with his work. "All I was interested in about photography was aesthetic beauty...places where color appears inadvertently."
Yet after photographing a large pile of garbage that he deemed "really beautiful," friends began to point him toward the social repercussions inherent in his work regarding waste and American consumerism. "It's something that I truly cannot take credit for, is finding my way to consumerism as my subject. Because it found me."
"There's this contrast between the beauty in the images and the underlying grotesqueness of the subjects. And it's something that I put in there intentionally. I know that if I were to take ugly photographs no one would be interested in looking at them," states Jordan about his Intolerable Beauty series.
Jordan's latest project, Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait, seeks to make tangible statistics about our country's consumption that involve such large numbers that they are difficult to fully fathom on the page. "Our minds are just not wired to be able to really comprehend and make meaning of, and feel, numbers that are that huge," Jordan explains. "I think there's this worldwide cultural craving for a more sensible approach to our consumption."
Below from "Running the Numbers," Jordan recreates George Seurat's famous painting "Sunday Afternoon on La Grande Jatte" using 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds:
Size plays an important part in the new series, with certain pictures over 10 feet high and 25 feet wide. "I want people to realize that they matter," Jordan describes. "As you walk up close, you can see that the collective is only made up of lots and lots of individuals. There is no bad consumer over there somewhere who needs to be educated. There is no public out there who needs to change. It's each one of us."
Photographic Artist Chris Jordan turns the statistics of consumerism into palpable images in his new photo series.
Former corporate attorney turned photographic artist, Chris Jordan explains that he never used to be focused upon making a social statement with his work. "All I was interested in about photography was aesthetic beauty...places where color appears inadvertently."
Yet after photographing a large pile of garbage that he deemed "really beautiful," friends began to point him toward the social repercussions inherent in his work regarding waste and American consumerism. "It's something that I truly cannot take credit for, is finding my way to consumerism as my subject. Because it found me."
"There's this contrast between the beauty in the images and the underlying grotesqueness of the subjects. And it's something that I put in there intentionally. I know that if I were to take ugly photographs no one would be interested in looking at them," states Jordan about his Intolerable Beauty series.
Jordan's latest project, Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait, seeks to make tangible statistics about our country's consumption that involve such large numbers that they are difficult to fully fathom on the page. "Our minds are just not wired to be able to really comprehend and make meaning of, and feel, numbers that are that huge," Jordan explains. "I think there's this worldwide cultural craving for a more sensible approach to our consumption."
Below from "Running the Numbers," Jordan recreates George Seurat's famous painting "Sunday Afternoon on La Grande Jatte" using 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds:
Size plays an important part in the new series, with certain pictures over 10 feet high and 25 feet wide. "I want people to realize that they matter," Jordan describes. "As you walk up close, you can see that the collective is only made up of lots and lots of individuals. There is no bad consumer over there somewhere who needs to be educated. There is no public out there who needs to change. It's each one of us."
