The Art of Consumption and Everyday Life

Profiled in the Toronto Star today, Photographer Chris Jordan have captured or digitally composed provocative images of the things we consume in everyday life but also statistics that we may not be able to grasp intuitively. For example, this work from his "Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait" is titled, 'Plastic Bags, 2007'.

It's description: "Depicts 60,000 plastic bags, the number used in the US every five seconds".

The actual print is 60 x 72". It's BIG. If you zoom in to actual size:


And if you were to take the time to count each plastic bag, you would find all 60,000.

All his images are thought-provoking, and very reminiscent of Edward Burtynksky's work, Manufactured Landscapes, creating art out of the mundane materials of western society. If I was to apply Chip and Dan Heath's principles from "Made to Stick" about how to communicate ideas effectively, Jordan's work would pass with flying colours:

Simple - The images are simple. In the "Running the Numbers" exhibit, It's one item, one number, one message.
Unexpected - The images appear abstract, until you look closer and find an everyday item.
Concrete - These aren't computer-generated products (although some are digitally composed together), but images of real things.
Credible - The numbers in his statistic has to match the numbers in the image. Otherwise, he'd lose all credibility.
Emotional - The shock is in making an abstract statistic into something tangible and can be grasped.
Story - It is a very short story about the different impacts we make collectively as a society.

As he says, he's not trying to guilt anyone, but to show what each person's everyday life looks like in aggregate. Whether we choose to do change something about it is another thing entirely. Do check out his other sets on his website, "Intolerable beauty" and "In Katrina's Wake".


Both images from http://www.chrisjordan.com