http://www.chrisjordan.com/

Beautiful Photography and composite artwork created from smaller photograph. Very large size work, measured in several feet by several feet, and some are tens of feet wide or long!

Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait
http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=7

Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption
http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set.php?arch_id=1

In Katrina's Wake: Portraits of Loss From an Unnatural Disaster
http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set.php?arch_id=6


Examples:

Cellphones




Handguns, 2007
Digital C print, 72x94"

Depicts 29,569 handguns, equal to the number of gun-related deaths in the US in 2004.


Partial zoom:


Detail at actual size:





Cans Seurat, 2007
Digital C print, 72x110"

Depicts 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds.


Partial zoom:


Detail at actual size:
http://www.chrisjordan.com/images/current2/1169352079.jpg




Ben Franklin, 2007
Archival inkjet, 8.5 feet wide by 10.5 feet tall in three horizontal panels

Depicts 125,000 one-hundred dollar bills ($12.5 million), the amount our government spends every hour on the war in Iraq.


Partial zoom:


Detail at actual size:

2/26/2007 4:10:55 AM

It strikes me as a set of pieces with an agenda that require little creative talent.. Frankly, as far as I can tell, it's only taking graphs and charts to an abnormal extreme. Yeah, they have a message, but it's obvious and bland..."Guernica" this stuff is not.

2/26/2007 5:14:00 AM

Quote :

"Depicts 125,000 one-hundred dollar bills ($12.5 million), the amount our government spends every hour on the war in Iraq."

Hah, interesting figure.

2/26/2007 5:48:40 AM

so he photoshopped a tile of a hundred dollar bill? Who cares.

This stuff is mediocre at best (I do like the cellphone one though)

2/26/2007 6:36:33 AM

Well, he wants to show statistics using pictures, instead of graphs or numbers. Might not be hard to do, but still unique and appealing.

If you like the cell phone, then look at the section with real pictures of dumps of used up objects:

http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set.php?arch_id=1

2/26/2007 6:44:01 AM

not impressed. The agenda doesn't really interest me... I've been to dumps and junkyards before. i'm around wasteful people all the time, he's not pointing out anything that most decently informed people don't realize. And to be honest, those who aren't aware of this stuff probably aren't spending much time on art. Nor is it anything that hasn't been done a thousand times before. And on top of the blandness and pretentiousness of the subject matter the images just aren't really that striking in my opinion.

I mean if you want to raise awareness at least make the images good enough to garner attention. Then once you've captivated the person let the stats sink in.

My advice to this artist would be the same that M.C. Serch recently gave a young, naive white rapper; "You're shortening your first line so you can really get to the punchline, But you're not selling that first line"

the website for the "running the numbers" series should be http://www.captainobvious.com

I do like some of the photography from the "in Katrina's Wake" series though.

[Edited on February 26, 2007 at 11:46 AM. Reason : .]

2/26/2007 11:45:05 AM

He sure shot that so it looked like corpses unearthed after the Holocaust.

2/26/2007 11:52:31 AM

Quote :

"so he photoshopped a tile of a hundred dollar bill? Who cares. This stuff is mediocre at best (I do like the cellphone one though)"

2/26/2007 12:30:49 PM

Don't they sell this crap in shopping malls with frames of the Star Wars movies?

2/26/2007 1:28:22 PM

Quote :

"Well, he wants to show statistics using pictures, instead of graphs or numbers. Might not be hard to do, but still unique and appealing."

But it really isn't, though. Plenty of publications and whatnot do the exact same thing in a simpler fashion and don't expect to get fellated for it. Ultimately this is just a very, very fancy pictograph.

2/27/2007 12:45:39 AM

most of them aren't even fancy.

A lot of his work are digital tricks that you can pull off in an hour or two. Stuff like this is used in commercial op-ed pieces all the time to give "impact".

Like whoever else said, waaay too obvious and unrefined

2/27/2007 1:25:41 AM

copy + paste

lame

2/27/2007 8:09:43 AM

It's amazing how Photoshop has changed the face of art.

2/27/2007 9:08:17 AM

Lame.

2/27/2007 9:32:50 AM