Chris Jordan's 'Running the Numbers' Series Visualizes Mass Consumption Statistics Through Photographic Art
Chris Jordan's initiative, 'Running the Numbers: Portraits of Human Mass Culture' (2004–2018), employs photographic methods to illustrate statistics related to global consumption and waste. Among his significant pieces are 'Venus' (2011), which highlights the consumption of 240,000 plastic bags every ten seconds, 'Gyre' (2009), showcasing 2.5 million plastic items retrieved from the Pacific Ocean, 'Caps Seurat' (2011) displaying 400,000 bottle caps, 'Barbie Dolls' (2008) featuring 32,000 dolls, and 'Skull with Cigarette' (2007) representing 200,000 cigarette packs. His latest collection, 'Beauty Emerging,' honors beauty as a form of healing, including works like 'Belleza Desesperada' and 'Ecstatic Desolation.' Jordan is also recognized for 'Intolerable Beauty,' 'Midway,' and the 2018 film 'Albatross,' focusing on themes of mass culture, waste, and activism.
Key facts
- Chris Jordan's 'Running the Numbers' series ran from 2004 to 2018.
- 'Venus' (2011) depicts 240,000 plastic bags, equal to global consumption every ten seconds in 2010.
- 'Gyre' (2009) shows 2.5 million plastic pieces collected from the Pacific Ocean.
- 'Caps Seurat' (2011) uses 400,000 bottle caps to represent U.S. plastic bottle consumption per minute in 2010.
- 'Barbie Dolls' (2008) features 32,000 Barbies, matching monthly U.S. breast augmentation surgeries in 2006.
- 'Skull with Cigarette' (2007) includes 200,000 cigarette packs, equivalent to American smoking deaths every six months in 2006.
- Jordan's newer project 'Beauty Emerging' focuses on beauty as transformative, with works in Chile and Patagonia.
- The series employs large-scale, intricately detailed images assembled from tens of thousands of photographs.
Entities
Artists
- Chris Jordan
- Bryant Austin
- Michael O. Snyder
Institutions
- Lenscratch
Locations
- Pacific Ocean
- United States
- Chile
- Patagonia