Running the Numbers
Chris Jordan’s Running the Numbers project features photographic prints of the massive amounts of waste we produce every day. Go see them. Now.
Running the Numbers An American Self-Portrait
This 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. 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.
cj, January 2007
3 comments
The Running the Numbers pictures are so cool although frightening. Reportedly, when personal computer use became practical, there was great hope that this would diminish paper use because data could be stored and presented in other ways besides on paper. Unfortunately, I think that the actual outcome is that we use more paper as personal computer use increased.
I was amazed at this, too!!!
Steph
Amazing, simply amazing…25 million plastic bottles in one hour? and all that paper? Not to mention the handguns. Very interesting…
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