Photographer Chris Jordan explores American consumerism

Chris Jordan's 60" photographs of human consumptions are beyond belief. Partly because of sheer 'wow' factor, and because the innovative use of Photoshop. With his Portraits of Mass Consumption and Running by the Numbers he appears to photograph items individually or in small groups and then layers them together to create a massive composition that is very realistic to view. "Gyre, 2009" is a 8 X 11 foot image that depicts 2.4 million pieces of plastic that enter the ocean every hour. Viewing "Gyre" from a distance presents the famous Japanese woodblock print, The Great Wave off Kanagawa. You can see all the plastic pieces as you examine the image closer.

"Exploring around our country’s shipping ports and industrial yards, where the accumulated detritus of our consumption is exposed to view like eroded layers in the Grand Canyon, I find evidence of a slow-motion apocalypse in progress. I am appalled by these scenes, and yet also drawn into them with awe and fascination. The immense scale of our consumption can appear desolate, macabre, oddly comical and ironic, and even darkly beautiful; for me its consistent feature is a staggering complexity." Chris Jordan

Woodblock by Katsushika Hokusai 1832

Photographs by Chris Jordan