Every now and then you come across something on the web that brings you up sharp. Having had a good long stroll on the beach - still cut with unwelcome detritus - the dog and I hit the net to trawl for new music, and as is the way of such things, came across Chris Jordan's site via the ever marvelous Radiohead links page. Not only is Jordan's photographic art arresting and beautiful it's also utterly appalling at the same time. He is a political artist who makes huge montages of waste to make a compelling statement. It's easier to just direct you to his site than to explain but in a nutshell he counts the terrifying amounts of US consumption and makes those numbers shout in art..... apparently in the Sates over 426,000 cell phones are 'retired' every day. 410,000 disposable hot-beverage paper cups are used every fifteen minutes. 60,000 plastic bags are used every five seconds. And one million plastic cups, the number used on airline flights in the US every six hours.... doing the sums is truly incomprehensible but he has made them understandable. Although the levels of thoughtless consumption are scary in the US, we're not far behind and it's no wonder that there's so much crap on the beach.
Depicts 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds.
closer-in
...make sense now?
Depicts two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes.
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