The art of consumerism

The toothpicks in this piece by Chris Jordan represent the number of trees used in one month for mail-order catalogs

Tonight I caught the last minute of a news story about artist Chris Jordan, who uses Photoshopped images to depict American consumerism. He turned to Photoshop when he realized that his real images weren't shocking enough to get across his message. A snarl of cell phone chargers didn't scream out mass consumption, it just looked beautifully futuristic. But an image of 8 million toothpicks to represent the number of trees used in one month of mail-order catalogs, well, it makes you pause and think while also being beautiful. This statistic reminded me of my earlier post about calling Gaiam and asking to be taken off their mailing list. Not two days later another catalog arrived in my mailbox from some company called Viva Terra. I hadn't gotten their catalog before and didn't ask for it. I suspect Gaiam sold my name to the company since they both sell eco-friendly products. So many trees wasted on junk mail we don't want.

Another of Jordan's images was a bluish sea with hints of color dotted throughout. The statistic he shared was that the U.S. consumes 2 million plastic bottles every five minutes, which is enough to fill eight football fields ... every five minutes. These wall-sized images are meant to create an impact. From far away it's a pretty picture but as you walk closer you see that it's made up of thousands upon thousands of items (his focus is not just environmental. As you walk closer to a row of orange vertical panels, it turns into folded prison uniforms representing every person in jail in the United States). His point is that the collective is made up of individuals. "It's each one of us," he said in the interview.

His images are beautiful, while also making the statistics that accompany them feel more real. The reaction is "Wow, that's a lot of (fill in the blank)." I thought that was pretty cool. See images from his project, Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait.