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. The artist hopes 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.

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. The artist hopes to raise some questions about the role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming. Running the Numbers images will look at some issues that are more global in scope: the world’s oceans, African issues, species extinctions.

To see the work visit

http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php