426,000 cell phones are “retired” in the U.S. every day
The photo above (zoomed in version) from Chris Jordan’s “Running the Numbers” exhibition is currently showing at Von Lintel Gallery in NYC.
Here’s the opening paragraph of his artist’s statement:
Exploring around our country’s shipping ports and industrial yards, where the accumulated detritus of our consumption is exposed to view like eroded layers in the Grand Canyon, I find evidence of a slow-motion apocalypse in progress. I am appalled by these scenes, and yet also drawn into them with awe and fascination. The immense scale of our consumption can appear desolate, macabre, oddly comical and ironic, and even darkly beautiful; for me its consistent feature is a staggering complexity.
Speaking to the meaning of his work and the process by which he brings it to life, Jordan says “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 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.
So, how does this display of grotesque consumption and waste make you feel? It makes me feel responsible, both in my personal consumption choices and in the line of work I have chosen to pursue.
