After attending law school for 'all the wrong reasons', and having beeen a lawyer for ten years, Chris Jordan decided to pack it all in and pursue his biggest passion; photography. Over the years Jordan had collected photography part-time, but now he was free to do it himself and make his mark on the art scene. And that he did, creating large-scale works that were jam-packed with shocking statistics and depicted sickening mass consumerism in the United States. One of Jordan's main mediums is garbage, using it to depict a greater image when looked at from a distance. Much of his works are constructed in this way; 213,000 Vicodin pills to depict the number of US emergency rooms visited every year in relation to drug abuse; 426,000 mobile phones to depict the amount retired every day in the US; and one hundred million toothpicks to depict the amount of trees cut down every year in the US to make paper for junk mail. What's interesting about Jordan's works is that there's no sense of self-righteousness in the images; free from pretension, Jordan's message doesn't lose its impact and forces the viewer to think about what is being suggested. Relying on everyday objects to make up a poignant pattern, Jordan's work proves that ignorance isn't bliss. In fact, it's damn stupid.
www.chrisjordan.com / Images: Chris Jordan