November 7, 2009 Written by Tracy Hepler
Inspirational photographer Chris Jordan kicked off the third annual Opportunity Green with a beautiful display of photography. He started off his presentation sharing his engaging work “Running the Numbers“ a series meant to help shed light on the impact of our garbage. When it comes to understanding statistics, most of us can’t understand the impact of 100 tons–however to visualize it can really bring the understanding home.
Jordan photographed single items such as stacks of grocery bags, plastic cups from airplanes and other items, then took multiple images (100s of 1000s of 1,000,000) and digitally “stiched” them together in order to create the visual impact of 1.14 million paper grocery bags (the amount of paper bags used in one hour) or 1 million plastic cups (the amount of plastic cups used in one day on U.S. flights).
The point of Jordan’s work is quite simple–we can’t comprehend numbers unless we can see them so through his photography work Jordan is able to make these issues real through actual visualization.
His most recent expedition took him to the island of Midway–a atoll in the middle of the North Pacific Ocean that is 2,000 miles away from the nearest continent. Despite being so remote, Midway is impacted from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch also known as the Pacific Gyre. The Gyre is considered to be twice the size of Texas and is teeming with plastic pollution. The pollution isn’t floating on top of the ocean–it has become mixed in with the ocean in such a way that fish and birds assume that it is food.
Midway happens to be the place where Albatrosses breed their young. Each year 100,000s of these birds dies–roughly 40% of the young chick population does not survive because they confuse plastic for food. When they die and their bodies decompose–plastic is all that remains.
This photography exhibit highlighted the serious issue that is happening to these animals and the ocean’s eco system because of human plastic pollution. Jordan closed his presentation stating that it is easy to distance oneself from things that are far away. We don’t see this devastation in our back yards, but it doesn’t mean that it isn’t happening and it doesn’t mean that our actions are not threatening the planet’s life support system.
Jordan’s presentation was truly inspirational and hopefully a call to all of us to kick our addiction to plastic and when we have no alternative, make sure you properly recycle your plastic.
Photography via Chris Jordan
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Wow. Thank you for exposing the photography of Chris Jordan.
The albatross photos here are so simultaneously aesthetically compelling and tragic, having read your explanation of the images.
These pictures are worth a thousand tweets, easily. What great visualizations.
Thanks for great coverage of the presentation. I hope a lot of people get to see Jordan’s work.
It’s heartbreaking to see the impact of our contemporary consumer culture so vividly. I agree entirely with Lisa’s observation on the albatross photos. I am thankful people like Chris Jordan are there to document this.
[...] how much money using single use plastic bags costs us annually too (This cost doesn’t include how plastic affects our marine life [...]
The albatross photos are incredible documentary pieces and undeniably showing the tragic story.