Running the Numbers - An American Self-Portrait
www.chrisjordan.com
This new series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics tend to feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or twelve million dollars spent on the Iraq war every hour. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs.
Valve Caps, 2006
Digital C print, 10x25 feet in five panels
Depicts 3.6 million tire valve caps, one for each new SUV sold in the US in 2004.
Partial zoom:
Detail at actual size:
This new series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics tend to feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or twelve million dollars spent on the Iraq war every hour. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs.
Valve Caps, 2006
Digital C print, 10x25 feet in five panels
Depicts 3.6 million tire valve caps, one for each new SUV sold in the US in 2004.
Partial zoom:
Detail at actual size:
Comments
as long as it's properly fucked, i don't remember anyone buying me a drink and complementing my hair...
this is awe-inspiring in a *mild nausea with shuddering* way.
where's my home-fabricator unit? the one that will re-use plastic milk jugs to fashion zippers and cereal bowls, area rugs and mousepads?
that'd make an awesome pic. a ginormous pile of defunct fab units.
now i want to see a pile of handbaskets.