Portraits of Global Mass Culture by Chris JordanListThumbs

Portraits of Global Mass Culture by Chris Jordan

We live in a society of mass consumption where everything seems to be disposable, causing one of the worst problems of our time, the huge amount of garbage produced by us and thrown away in the ocean or other areas every day. Chris Jordan, has been using this subject in some his photography exhibitions, alerting us to how terrible we have been treating our planet.

Chris photos are incredible and in his Running the Numbers II Portraits of global mass culture exhibition, each image portrays a specific quantity of something: the number of tuna fished from the world's oceans every fifteen minutes, for example. But this time the statistics are global in scale, rather than specifically American.

Finding meaning in global mass phenomena can be difficult because the phenomena themselves are invisible, spread across the earth in millions of separate places. There is no Mount Everest of waste that we can make a pilgrimage to and behold the sobering aggregate of our discarded stuff, seeing and feeling it viscerally with our senses.

We highly recommend that you visit Chris' website (http://www.chrisjordan.com) and take a closer look at his photos, they are incredible but show us how bad we are with our world.

Gyre, 2009

8x11 feet, in three vertical panels

Depicts 2.4 million pieces of plastic, equal to the estimated number of pounds of plastic pollution that enter the world's oceans every hour. All of the plastic in this image was collected from the Pacific Ocean.

Photography from the Portraits of Global Mass Culture by Chris Jordan Collection

Photography from the Portraits of Global Mass Culture by Chris Jordan Collection

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Photography from the Portraits of Global Mass Culture by Chris Jordan Collection

Photography from the Portraits of Global Mass Culture by Chris Jordan Collection

Photography from the Portraits of Global Mass Culture by Chris Jordan Collection

Photography from the Portraits of Global Mass Culture by Chris Jordan Collection

Photography from the Portraits of Global Mass Culture by Chris Jordan Collection

Shark Teeth, 2009

64x94"; based on a watercolor painting by Sarah Waller

Depicts 270,000 fossilized shark teeth, equal to the estimated number of sharks of all species killed around the world every day for their fins.

Photography from the Portraits of Global Mass Culture by Chris Jordan Collection

Photography from the Portraits of Global Mass Culture by Chris Jordan Collection

Photography from the Portraits of Global Mass Culture by Chris Jordan Collection

Photos from other Exhibitions

Photography from the Portraits of Global Mass Culture by Chris Jordan Collection
Cell phones #2, Atlanta 2005

Photography from the Portraits of Global Mass Culture by Chris Jordan Collection
Cell phone chargers, Atlanta 2004

Photography from the Portraits of Global Mass Culture by Chris Jordan Collection
Spent bullet casings, 2005

Photography from the Portraits of Global Mass Culture by Chris Jordan Collection
Container yard #2, Seattle 2004

Photography from the Portraits of Global Mass Culture by Chris Jordan Collection

Photography from the Portraits of Global Mass Culture by Chris Jordan Collection

About the author

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My name is Fabio Sasso, I'm a graphic/web designer from Porto Alegre, Brazil and I'm the founder of Abduzeedo. I hope we can share lots of information, tips, and ideas through Abduzeedo. Also you can follow me on Twitter or my personal site at http://fabiosasso.com.

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9 Comments

Brendon O'Dwyer05/26/2009

Its interesting how images such of these, can, in a way be absolutely beautiful despite them being made from completely and utterly pieces of trash.

radiodelicatessen05/26/2009

Parabéns pelo Post.
Nós também adoramos o o trabalho de Chris Jordan em nosso blog http://www.radiodelicatessen.com.br/?p=4285.
Gostamos muio da abordagm dele. Beleza que impacta e serve de alerta. O que faremos com tudo o que é descartável?

Um abraço
Radiodelicatessen
O mundo em porções, fatias e colheradas.
http://www.radiodelicatessen.com.br

Avida05/26/2009

Horrifying and amazing, great find : )

mal05/26/2009

Alot of mixed feelings with this one, awesome artwork either way..

Kristof05/26/2009

This pictures are great. Yet I think the most impressive of Chris Jordans work still remains those giant, monotone Prison-uniform Posters:
http://www.chrisjordan.com/images/current2/1182363859.jpg

Anonymous05/26/2009

Good!

kab05/26/2009

interesting pictures, i like it

John Kirk05/26/2009

Sad! Makes for some nice art though-

Franky05/27/2009

I feel sick. Amazing, yet disturbing.

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