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Chris Jordan photographic arts

jordan1.jpg

A familiar image, no? Let’s take a closer look:

jordan1.jpg

Those cans comprise a total of 106,000, the number of cans used in the U.S. every thirty seconds.

Photographer artist Chris Jordan takes an artistic look at “the accumulated detritus of our consumption”. I remember visiting his site last year for his exhibit Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption, but since then he’s added a new exhibit Running the Numbers: An American Self Portrait which is just as fascinating and uncomfortable to look at. Jordan’s critical lens captures a rather frightening look at how we live our lives in such a seemingly disposable world, and I can only imagine how they must impact the viewer who sees them in person as large-format prints.

  • bromide01

    Well, I try to recycle paper and cans since my city has a recycling program. So if this is some attempt to make everyone feel guilty, I don’t know. Of course recycling programs aren’t enough since the process to make the products to be recycled makes more waste than the recycling programs can make up for.

    What did the artist use to secure these cans together? I don’t know, but I would guess some kind of glue. Glue is made from chemicals. Chemicals are made in factories which produce waste and use fossil fuels to run them. This site exists on a server that runs all day. That server uses power from a plant that most likely uses fossil fuels to generate the electricity. All the computers viewing this site use electricity. Etc.

    Art is wasteful from an environmental standpoint. Paint? Turpentine? Paper/pulp? Large quantity printing for comic books, sketch books, coffee table books, the ever beloved vinyl art toys. Even “pure” digital art that never gets printed uses electricity and could be stored on CDs made of evil plastic.

    What to do? I don’t know. Draw in mud. Woops. That could cause erosion.

    Give up I guess.

  • bromide01

    Well, I try to recycle paper and cans since my city has a recycling program. So if this is some attempt to make everyone feel guilty, I don’t know. Of course recycling programs aren’t enough since the process to make the products to be recycled makes more waste than the recycling programs can make up for.

    What did the artist use to secure these cans together? I don’t know, but I would guess some kind of glue. Glue is made from chemicals. Chemicals are made in factories which produce waste and use fossil fuels to run them. This site exists on a server that runs all day. That server uses power from a plant that most likely uses fossil fuels to generate the electricity. All the computers viewing this site use electricity. Etc.

    Art is wasteful from an environmental standpoint. Paint? Turpentine? Paper/pulp? Large quantity printing for comic books, sketch books, coffee table books, the ever beloved vinyl art toys. Even “pure” digital art that never gets printed uses electricity and could be stored on CDs made of evil plastic.

    What to do? I don’t know. Draw in mud. Woops. That could cause erosion.

    Give up I guess.

  • http://www.webcomicsnation.com/mike_luce/fite/series.php Thomas Blue

    I have to wonder, too what the numbers of consumption must be for nations that don’t recycle at all. From what I’ve seen from shows like “How It’s Made,” it’s actually more efficient to recycle aluminum than it is to make cans from scracth. His art has its reason, but it points a familiar finger.

  • http://www.webcomicsnation.com/mike_luce/fite/series.php Thomas Blue

    I have to wonder, too what the numbers of consumption must be for nations that don’t recycle at all. From what I’ve seen from shows like “How It’s Made,” it’s actually more efficient to recycle aluminum than it is to make cans from scracth. His art has its reason, but it points a familiar finger.