After working as a lawyer for ten years in Washington, Chris Jordan left the corporate world behind to pursue his passion of photography. But unlike traditional photographers that enjoy taking pictures of landscapes, family portraits, or events like weddings, Jordan’s work depicts something that few have captured effectively before – mass consumption.
The tricky part about capturing mass consumption in one photo is that it is what we call a ‘hyperobject’. Hyperobjects describe phenomena that are so massive that they are difficult for humans to fully comprehend their impact. For instance, most people will never be exposed to witness something like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch with their own eyes, so they can never actually begin to fathom just how much plastic waste is floating around in the ocean. That’s where Jordan’s work comes in.
Jordan made it his mission to showcase how destructive our consumption habits are with the power of the mosaic. Below are a few images from his “Running the Numbers” exhibit that, in Jordan’s words, translate the raw language of statistics “into a more universal, visual language that can be felt”.
Trees cut down for junk mail
Think about how much paper you receive in your mailbox every week, and how much of that goes straight into the trash. Though it may not seem like a big deal to throw junk mail away, it is important to realize that 100 million trees are cut down every year just to supply paper for junk mail. Below is a beautiful image of the sky, consisting of 100 million toothpicks – each tooth pick representing a tree whose life was stolen for the sole purpose of an ad that would be thrown away. Though we can’t control all of the random advertisements that find themselves in our mailboxes, there are steps you can take to curb that number a little bit.
What you can do: Unsubscribe from any mailing services that you do not care for. Cancel old magazine subscriptions that you never read. Update your billing preferences to digital for everything that you can! By making these small changes, you can stop pounds of paper from ending up straight in the landfill each year and save our forests in the process!!!
Is there a cap for that?
Take a moment to think about how often you grab a bottled drink when you visit the gas station or the grocery store. Now think about your habits compared to everyone else in the United States. Guess how many bottle caps would that produce.
Based on the famous “A Sunday on the Grande Jatte”, Jordan recreated “Caps Seurat” with 400,000 bottle caps. Now, 400,000 isn’t how many bottle caps we go through in a week, a day, or even an hour. Rather, 400,000 bottle caps is equal to the number of bottles that the United States consumes every single minute.
What you can do: You’ve heard it before, but I’ll say it again. Bring a reusable bottle with you everywhere you go. Keep a thermos in your purse, and another in your backpack, and one for your car. I refill my 32 oz Gatorade water bottle four times each day, which prevents me from using 8 plastic water bottles daily, which adds up to 2,920 plastic water bottles and caps a year! You can do this too! I believe in you!
Plastic in the ocean
It would be an understatement to say that the world’s oceans are gigantic. Honestly, it’s hard to imagine how many pieces of plastic are floating around out there, so I’ll make it easy for you – 2.4 million pieces of plastic enter the ocean every single hour. Below in Jordan’s recreation of the 1821 painting “Under the Wave off Kanagawa”, you’ll find that the piece is a mosaic of 2.4 million pieces of plastic. From bottle chunks, to floss picks, to larger, unidentifiable objects shattered into smithereens, these are the plastics contaminating our oceans. Plastic suffocates animals, pollutes marine eco-systems, and not even the deepest, darkest trenches of the ocean are devoid of them.
What you can do:
Reduce: Do you need that straw, or can you just pick up your cup and drink straight from the glass? Do you need to wrap your food in saran wrap, or can you just put it in some Tupperware. Think about all of the ways you can eliminate having to use plastic in the first place and you’re already winning.
Reuse: Hey! Don’t throw that sandwich bag away! If you pack your little Goldfish cracker snack in a plastic baggie every day, just reuse the baggie throughout the week! As long as the bag doesn’t start to get gross, there’s no reason to use seven baggies when you could be using just one. This concept can be applied to countless things in your daily life!
Recycle: If you have an item with a recycling symbol on it, please do not just throw it in the garbage. Hold on to it until you find a recycling bin. Trust me, it’ll be worth it.
Pick it up: Lastly, you can help prevent litter from ending up in the oceans by participating in trash clean-ups! Whether it’s on the beach, along rivers, or just by the highway, you can prevent hundreds of pieces of plastic from an ocean pollution fate. So if you’re feeling inspired to volunteer, consider slipping on a pair of gloves, grabbing a trash bag, and spending an hour making the world a more beautiful place.
If you’re interested in discovering more of Jordan’s “Running the Numbers” artwork, you can check out his portfolio here!
Community corner: Which of Jordan’s works surprised you the most? Comment down below and let me know if you looked at any other pieces in Jordan’s portfolio – I’d love to hear your thoughts on which pieces you found the most shocking!
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