Chris Jordan

Chris Jordan transforms statistical data into art in a very creative and inspiring way.

The Running the Numbers series, for example, start with statistical data relating to American consumption, in the first case, and mass phenomena, in the second, to create images that convey the vastness of the phenomenon.

Regarding the first series, the author writes:

Running the Numbers 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 32,000 breast augmentation surgeries in the U.S. every month.

This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. Employing themes such as the near versus the far, and the one versus the many, I hope to raise some questions about the roles and responsibilities we each play as individuals in a collective that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.

Images published on the web can be enlarged to reveal their composition. Below is an example from the first series at various levels of magnification.

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