Our Garbage is Chris Jordan’s Art

Image via Chris Jordan.com. All rights Chris Jordan

Scores of artists have made art from what they find on the street, from what is essentially garbage. Rauschenberg’s combines were just this, put together trash, pieces of random detritus he found in the street. For Rauschenberg, and his group of fellow artists who were broke and living in Soho, finding the material for your art in the street was a cheap and inventive approach.

But creative work made from garbage means something different now than it did in the middle of the last century. Much like Land Art means something different now than it did in the 70s. We are now all too aware of the garbage that surrounds us and what it means. We are stuck with it, our plastics and our synthetic materials created as the result of ingenious lab work that has temporary use but a permanent footprint. Photographer Chris Jordan is attuned to this surplus of stuff on this planet and he has a keen and clearly patient hand to make art with it. In “Cell Phones #2,” Jordan shot a sea of cell phones from above, forming twisting, unpredictable veins of patterning. Most of the phones are black but occasionally a bright yellow or pink phone breaks up the monotony. In “Cigarette Butts,” we see an almost Pollock-esque image of white and tan. The cigarette butts in the photo are so numerous that it baffles the mind to think of how many diagnoses of lung cancer might have resulted from the collection. “Plastic Bottles” depicts 2 million discarded plastic bottles, which create a seemingly endless multi-colored mosaic. The caption reads that 2 million plastic bottles is “the number used in the US every five minutes.”

Image after image of Jordan’s work plays on a similar concept. He presents the idea of the statistics of tangible, often consumerist items, while reminding the viewer that these seas of garbage are shortening our time on earth. He gathers for one photograph the things humans use and throw away, immense numbers of them. Put together they astound and seem nearly farcical.

Jordan’s art has a mission and a position. It is ecologically minded and it’s aim is to change the world through awareness. They are physical and visual representations of ideas and concepts. Some of his most moving images are from the Midway series in which Jordan photographed dead albatross chicks. Here, statistics do not come into play. The birds stomachs are opened, feathers and beak scattered around its contents. The objects found in the stomachs are the center of the work.

From Jordan’s website:

To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world’s most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent.

Chris Jordan had a book published by Prestel last spring. Be sure to check it out.

via chris jordan photography.