Chris Jordan (born 1963) is an American artist, photographer and film producer based in
Seattle
Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...
, Washington.
Works
Many of Jordan's works are created from photographs of
garbage
Garbage, trash (American English), rubbish (British English), or refuse is waste material that is discarded by humans, usually due to a perceived lack of utility. The term generally does not encompass bodily waste products, purely liquid or ...
and mass consumption, a technique which started when he visited an industrial yard to look at patterns of color and order. Jordan uses everyday commonalities such as a plastic cup, attempting to define the blind unawareness involved in American
consumerism
Consumerism is a socio-cultural and economic phenomenon that is typical of industrialized societies. It is characterized by the continuous acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing quantities. In contemporary consumer society, the ...
.
Beautifully ugly photography
. Vancouver Sun
The ''Vancouver Sun'', also known as the ''Sun'', is a daily broadsheet newspaper based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The newspaper is currently published by the Pacific Newspaper Group, a division of Postmedia Network, and is the larg ...
, 9 February 2008.
''Midway'' project
''Midway: Message from the Gyre'' (2009–2013) is a series of photographs depicting rotting carcasses of baby Laysan albatrosses filled with plastic. These birds nest on Midway Atoll
Midway Atoll (colloquialism, colloquial: Midway Islands; ; ) is a atoll in the North Pacific Ocean. Midway Atoll is an insular area of the United States and is an Insular area#Unorganized unincorporated territories, unorganized and unincorpo ...
and are being fed plastic by their parents, who find floating plastic in the middle of the ocean and mistake it for food. This is a part of an ongoing arts and media project called Midway Journey, which has its own website.
See also
* Of All The People In All The World – an art installation depicting similar statistics, using piles of rice
References
External links
*
Video: Chris Jordan presents his Midway work
at Pop!Tech
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jordan, Chris
American photographers
American environmental artists
1963 births
Living people
Sierra Club awardees