Chris Jordan

Running the Numbers

Just a few weeks into his first semester of law school, Chris developed a deep passion for photography. For ten years he worked by day as a lawyer and spent all his free time and money pursuing this passion. He said that all that time he knew he’d found his calling, but only lacked the courage to commit to it.

One day it dawned on him what the consequences would be if he continued on his path as a lawyer, and so he took the plunge– he abandoned his career as a lawyer and pursued his art full time.

Chris first came by chance upon the cause that he has now devoted so many years to. He had photographed a pile of garbage and found it beautiful for its complexity and color. So began his ongoing inquiry into consumerism.

Speaking about his latest work, entitled “Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait”, Chris acknowledges that he is both self-reflective in the individual as well as the collective sense– he includes himself in his criticism of mass consumerism.

“As an artist, I want to draw people gently into this conversation by raising the right questions.”

His purpose is one of deep concern for both the effect this pattern has on our planet as well as the spirituality of the people inhabiting it.

“Maybe the biggest tragedy of all is that we are in denial about how our consumer lifestyle is sapping our own spirits... We are slowly killing ourselves, and we all feel it... I think Americans in the first decade of the 21st century will be looked back upon by more evolved societies of the future as some of the most spiritually lost people in the history of humankind.”

Jordan’s works in “Running the Numbers”, seen at a distance, appear simply as modern art. As the viewer is drawn in to examine the intricate details of his images, they are awaken to a deeper conversation and concern. The number of pieces constituting the the whole correlates with a surprising statistic about just how rampant our consumerism is. He says that beauty is a key to getting the attention of the viewer to convey this message:

“Beauty is a powerfully effective tool for drawing viewers into uncomfortable territory. If I took ugly photographs, no one would want to look at them. My hope is to seduce the viewer with the intricate details and colors, and maybe the beauty of that will hold their attention while the deeper message seeps in. Many photographers have used beauty in this way, and it can be tremendously effective.”

It is a powerful metaphor for consumerism: from a distance it looks attractive, but when its effects and consequences are examined up close, we find that it is not beautiful or pleasant at all, but rather troubling.

Elaborating more on his role as an artist and purpose for art itself, he talks about these statistics that are otherwise hard to comprehend and easy to ignore:

“The information that we have to work with is these gigantic numbers: numbers in the millions, in the hundreds of millions, in the billions and now in the trillions... these are numbers that our brain just doesn’t have the ability to comprehend. We can’t make meaning out of these enormous statistics. And so that’s what I’m trying to do with my work, is to take these numbers, these statistics from the raw language of data, and to translate them into a more universal visual language, that can be felt. Because my belief is, if we can feel these issues, if we can feel these things more deeply, then they’ll matter to us more than they do now. And if we can find that, then we’ll be able to find within each one of us what it is that we need to find to face the big question, which is: How do we change?”

Chris Jordan has both demonstrated how powerful and important visual communication is, and has given his talents a purpose greater than himself, in which he influences and invites others to participate and change for the better of all.

Van Gogh's "Skull with Cigarette", made up of thousands of boxes of cigarettes to illustrate that more than 400,000 people die in the United States each year from cigarette smoking. That's 1,100 people every day. Images © Chris Jordan