Chris Jordan runs the numbers on modern American life -- making large-format, long-zoom artwork from the most mindblowing data about our stuff.
Why you should listen
Photographer Chris Jordan trains his eye on American consumption. His 2003-05 series "Intolerable Beauty" examines the hypnotic allure of the sheer amount of stuff we make and consume every day: cliffs of baled scrap, small cities of shipping containers, endless grids of mass-produced goods.
His 2005 book In Katrina's Wake: Portraits of Loss from an Unnatural Disaster is a chilling, unflinching look at the toll of the storm. And his latest series of photographs, "Running the Numbers," gives dramatic life to statistics of US consumption. Often-heard factoids like "We use 2 million plastic bottles every 5 minutes" become a chilling sea of plastic that stretches beyond our horizon.
In April 2008, Jordan traveled around the world with National Geographic as an international eco-ambassador for Earth Day 2008.
What others say
As you walk up close, you can see that the collective is only made up of lots and lots of individuals. There is no bad consumer over there somewhere who needs to be educated. There is no public out there who needs to change. It's each one of us.
Chris Jordan’s TED Talk
More news and ideas from Chris Jordan
Science
What plastic item would you love to ban? 15 ocean experts (and TED speakers) tell us.
July 19, 2018
Yes, plastic straws are bad, but they’re just a teeny drop in the giant ocean of plastic we’re swimming in. Here are other everyday plastic objects that we could put on the discontinued list.
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Planet Green's top 5 eco TEDTalks
May 28, 2010
The US cable channel Planet Green counts down their five favorite eco TEDTalks — with some great big visions to save the planet and the people on it. Some old favorites and some you might have missed. Watch the short video roundup linked above, and watch Planet Green’s five top eco TEDTalks right here: Paul […]
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Chris Jordan follows the plastic to Midway Atoll
September 14, 2009
Chris Jordan (watch his TEDTalk) is on Midway Atoll with a team of artists to document a shocking result of our love of plastic: thousands of albatrosses who mistake floating plastic trash for food — and are starving to death. Midway is near the apex of the Pacific Garbage Patch (watch Capt. Charles Moore’s TEDTalk […]
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