Chris Jordan’s Portraits of American Mass Consumption
American photographer Chris Jordan
using large-scale works depict the magnitude of our consumerism and its
impact on our environment. Like Edward Burtynsky, Jordan uses large
scale photographs to depict scenes of infrastructure and industrial
waste that few of us will ever experience in person. While Edward Burtynsky’s work
revolves around the petroleum and mining industry and man-made
architecture, Jordan uses everyday commonalities such as a plastic cup
and defines the blind unawareness involved in American consumerism.
In
2005 he documented the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in “In Katrina's
Wake: Portraits of Loss from an Unnatural Disaster”. In the 2006-09
series "Running the Numbers," Jordan gives a dramatic life to statistics
of American consumerism, social problems, and addictions.
