numbers into perspective

The following is the work of artist chris jones, from Seattle, and was shown to me by my friend Jacob Court. Fantastic representation. See his website for all the pieces and up close images of these huge works of art.

"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 role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming."

-chris jordan, seattle Plastic Bags, 2007
60x72"

Depicts 60,000 plastic bags, the number used in the US every five seconds.

Energizer, 2007
60x99"

Depicts 170,000 disposable Energizer batteries, equal to fifteen minutes of Energizer battery production.