Category — Inspiration

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

This October, I’m flying to Tampa to do something I’ve always wanted to do.

I will walk 60 miles in three days to fight breast cancer.

Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death for all women, and the leading cause of death in women between the ages of 40 and 55. Both its cause and the means for its cure remain undiscovered. Currently, one million women in the U.S. have the disease and probably won’t know about their potentially fatal illness for another five to eight years. Breast cancer has challenged 2 million survivors in the U.S. Increased awareness means more survivors.

I’m taking on this challenge to do something big that will help raise awareness and help in finding a cure. I want to make a personal difference in the fight against breast cancer. I want to help raise millions of dollars for breast cancer research and patient support programs.

My personal challenge starts today. Over the next five months, I’ll be spending many, many, many hours in training. By the time the walk starts on October 19th, I will have logged enough miles to take me from Chicago to California. I’ll track all of my training and progress here so that you can share this with me.

There will be times when I won’t feel like training. Or my back will hurt. Or I’ll just be too tired. Then I’ll think of all the people that I love who have been affected by breast cancer. I walk for them. I walk for our friends, sisters, mothers, grandmothers, aunts and cousins. And I walk for our daughters, so that their daughters won’t have to walk for their grandmothers.

As a condition of participation, I’m committed to raising at least $2,200. So, yeah, this is a plea for your emotional and financial support. A dollar for every mile that I’ll be covering (one way or the other) would be wonderful, but I’m grateful for whatever contribution you would like to make.

My personal fundraising goal is $5,000. If you help me reach this goal, I’ll dye my hair hot pink for the walk. That’s right.

.: From this                                       .: To this

And if you’re my dad? Match the donations I’ve raised, and I won’t dye my hair hot pink for the walk.

.:

This is so much more than ‘just a walk.’ It’s a way for me to make a difference, for all of us to make a difference, to raise money for Susan G. Komen for the Cure and the National Philanthropic Trust Breast Cancer Fund.

Join me in taking this journey.

.: Taken by my dad in Philly.

.: This one too. Beautiful.