Visual Vital Statistics

[MA-Caver]

Artist Christopher Jordan created these images which visually represents some of the nation's vital statistics. The images are startling as opposed to seeing the numbers on paper.

http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=?view=XXX_09NNN/
Running the Numbers
An American Self-Portrait

This new series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 426,000 cell phones retired every day. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs.

My only caveat about this series is that the prints must be seen in person to be experienced the way they are intended. As with any large artwork, their scale carries a vital part of their substance which is lost in these little web images. Hopefully the JPEGs displayed here might be enough to arouse your curiosity to attend an exhibition, or to arrange one if you are in a position to do so. The series is a work in progress, and new images will be posted as they are completed, so please stay tuned.

~chris jordan, Seattle, 2007

At the plastic bags and guns and cigarettes and $100.00 bills it's amazing how much is how much. Some of the images are below...
1. Depicts two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes.
2. partial zoom.
3. Depicts 65,000 cigarettes, equal to the number of American teenagers under age eighteen who become addicted to cigarettes every month.
4. Depicts 426,000 cell phones, equal to the number of cell phones retired in the US every day. (partial zoom)
5. Depicts 60,000 plastic bags, the number used in the US every five seconds.
6. Depicts 2.3 million folded prison uniforms, equal to the number of Americans incarcerated in 2005.
7.
Depicts 125,000 one-hundred dollar bills ($12.5 million), the amount our government spends every hour on the war in Iraq. (partial zoom)