By Madelyn Lipszyc

The human population is being bombarded with statistics daily - in the media, in educational institutions, everywhere. We hear of mass deaths, tons of toxic waste that has been spilled, and other figures struggling to explain the annihilation that has occurred. The amalgamation of numbers surely speaks to us, but there is something about statistical information that is hard to really imagine - or to connect with.

Cans Seurat 2007 depicts 106,000 aluminum cans arranged in the manner of the famous painting Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. The number of cans represent the amount of soda Americans drink every 30 seconds.

Chris Jordan, a photographic artist from Seattle, has engineered a new way for people to interpret and connect with these numbers; he brings them closer to home for viewers. He assembles various materials into a visual and then photographs it; but when we look more closely, the detail demonstrates information of its own. A striking work of art by Jordan entitled Gyre (2009) looks like large waves crashing in front of Mount Fuji when viewed from a distance. But close up, it can be seen that this presentation is actually made of, in Jordan's words: "2.4 million pieces of plastic, equal to the estimated number of pounds of plastic pollution that enter the world's oceans every hour. All of the plastic in this image was collected from the Pacific Ocean."

Jordan's images are so much more than the statistics they represent; they transcend uncanny and uncomfortable numbers by awakening our emotions, senses and minds. The images allow us to comprehend a natural disaster or event which would otherwise slip right by. His photographs are sometimes based on paintings, and recreate their originals using garbage or other categorized consumer goods. Some other actual materials he has used are: disposable Energizer batteries, paper and plastic cups and bags, cigarette packs, and dollar bills.

Jordan's newest book, Running the Numbers II: Portraits of Global Mass Culture has just been released. It is a follow up to Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait, but his focus this time is a larger scale, global demonstration. The book is also accompanied by a traveling exhibition, which will visit select cities in the United States over the next few years.

Prior to the Running the Numbers series, Jordan also compiled two other photography books which explore the visual world of devastation: Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption, and In Katrina's Wake: Portraits of Loss from an Unnatural Disaster. The photos from these books exhibit the personal and environmental ruination of Hurricane Katrina, and the consumption habits of America, on a scale that reaches far beyond that of mere numbers, and stretches into the realm of imagination.

Just like numbers, it is hard for words to describe the feeling one gets when being confronted with one of Jordan's pieces. Shark Teeth (2009) is a photograph of two sharks. The image is actually composed of "270, 000 fossilized shark teeth: the estimated number of sharks of all species killed around the world every day for their fins" and can be seen, along with other sample photos, their enlargements and more information about Chris Jordan, on his website: www.chrisjordan.com.

Jordan's photos often make statements about the environmental effects of global and American consumerism that cannot otherwise be fully understood. His photos allow a viewer to experience the statistic for him or herself. In the words of Ansel Adams, "You don't take a photograph, you make it."

The picture entitled Ben Franklin (2005), "depicts 125,000 one-hundred dollar bills ($12.5 million), the amount the US government spends every hour on the war in Iraq." And Office Paper (2007) "depicts 30,000 reams of office paper, or 15 million sheets, equal to the amount of office paper used in the US every five minutes," stacked. Paper Cups (2008) "depicts 410,000 paper cups, equal to the number of disposable hot-beverage paper cups used in the US every fifteen minutes." Again, these numbers are surely striking, but it takes one of Jordan's photos to really explain the reality to us in a way that extends far beyond statistics.

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