March 21, 2010

All-Consuming Art

© Chris Jordan, courtesy of Kopeikin Gallery, Los Angeles

Chris Jordan's photographic work "Gyre," inspired by a famous Japanese print, depicts 2.4 million pieces of plastic—the estimated number of pounds of plastic pollution that enter the world's oceans every hour.

By Carolyn Mooney

Chris Jordan's provocatively manipulated digital photographs tell a striking story of human consumption and degradation.

Did you ever wonder how many plastic beverage bottles Americans use, and what they would look like if you could see them all at once? Jordan, a Seattle-based photographer, did wonder, and his "Running the Numbers" project is the result. Besides showing the two million plastic bottles that the artist says Americans use every five minutes, his photographs (