Friday, August 31, 2007

Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait

Check out this interesting set of works from Chris Jorgan. What a way to capture our consumption visually, and beautifully!

Here's info from the Global Footprint Network:
If a picture is worth a thousand words, Artist Chris Jorgan's photos
speak volumes. In Jordan's own words, the photographs portray
"contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics."

Many of the images portray a specific quantity of something Americans
consume: 8 million toothpicks, representing the number of trees
harvested in the US every month to make the paper for mail order
catalogs; 106,000 aluminum cans, reflecting "thirty seconds of can
consumption," according to Jordan. The image above, for example, is a
portion of Jordan's image of 426,000 cell phones, which he says is
"equal to the number of cell phones retired in the US every day."

This series will be exhibited at the Paul Kopeikin Gallery in Los
Angeles, opening Sep 8. More info at www.paulkopeikingallery.com.

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