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Running the Numbers -- An American Self-Portrait

Chris Jordan

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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. My hope is 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, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 32,000 breast augmentation surgeries in the U.S. every month.

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, I hope to raise some questions about the roles and responsibililties of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.

~chris jordan, Seattle, 2008

[ Several new images coming soon; and my apologies for the slow-loading website. In a few weeks these JPEGs will have a cool zooming function, using Microsoft's new SeaDragon technology. Please stay tuned! ~cj, December 2008 ].

Oil Barrels, 2008

Depicts 28,000 42-gallon barrels, the amount of of oil consumed in the United States every two minutes (equal to the flow of a medium-sized river).

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Detail at actual print size:

Light Bulbs, 2008

72x96"

Depicts 320,000 light bulbs, equal to the number of kilowatt hours of electricity wasted in the United States every minute from inefficient residential electricity usage (inefficient wiring, computers in sleep mode, etc.).

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Detail at actual print size (it's a giant hot-air balloon festival in outer space!):

Toothpicks, 2008

60x96"

Depicts one hundred million toothpicks, equal to the number of trees cut in the U.S. yearly to make the paper for junk mail.

Plastic Cups, 2008

60x90"

Depicts one million plastic cups, the number used on airline flights in the US every six hours.

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Barbie Dolls, 2008

60x80"

Depicts 32,000 Barbies, equal to the number of elective breast augmentation surgeries performed monthly in the US in 2006.

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Plastic Bottles, 2007

60x120"

Depicts two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes.

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Constitution, 2008

8 x 25 feet in five panels

Depicts 83,000 Abu Ghraib prisoner photographs, equal to the number of people who have been arrested and held at US-run detention facilities with no trial or other due process of law, during the Bush Administration's war on terror.

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Skull With Cigarette, 2007 [based on a painting by Van Gogh]

72x98"

Depicts 200,000 packs of cigarettes, equal to the number of Americans who die from cigarette smoking every six months.

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Jet Trails, 2007

60x96"

Depicts 11,000 jet trails, equal to the number of commercial flights in the US every eight hours.

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Prison Uniforms, 2007

10x23 feet in six vertical panels

Depicts 2.3 million folded prison uniforms, equal to the number of Americans incarcerated in 2005. The U.S. has the largest prison population of any country in the world.

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Installed at the Von Lintel Gallery, NY, June 2007

Cell Phones, 2007

60x100"

Depicts 426,000 cell phones, equal to the number of cell phones retired in the US every day.

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Paper Bags, 2007

60x80"

Depicts 1.14 million brown paper supermarket bags, the number used in the US every hour.

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Cans Seurat, 2007

60x92"

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

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Paper Cups, 2008

60x96"

Depicts 410,000 paper cups, equal to the number of disposable hot-beverage paper cups used in the US every fifteen minutes.

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Cigarettes, 2007

60x82"

Depicts 65,000 cigarettes, equal to the number of American teenagers under age eighteen who become addicted to cigarettes every month.

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Building Blocks, 2007

16 feet tall x 32 feet wide in eighteen square panels, each sized 62x62".

Depicts nine million wooden ABC blocks, equal to the number of American children with no health insurance coverage in 2007.

With figures drawn for scale reference:

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Denali Denial, 2006

60x75"

Depicts 24,000 logos from the GMC Yukon Denali, equal to six weeks of sales of that model SUV in 2004.

Detail at actual size (this is the far left corner of the lake):

Pain Killers, 2007

60x63"

Depicts 213,000 Vicodin pills, equal to the number of emergency room visits yearly in the US related to misuse or abuse of prescription pain killers.

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Handguns, 2007

60x92"

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

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Plastic Bags, 2007

60x72"

Depicts 60,000 plastic bags, the number used in the US every five seconds.

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Office Paper, 2007

60x87"

Depicts 30,000 reams of office paper, or 15 million sheets, equal to the amount of office paper used in the US every five minutes.

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Valve Caps, 2006

10x25 feet in five vertical panels

Depicts 3.6 million tire valve caps, one for each new SUV sold in the US in 2004.

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Ben Franklin, 2007

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.

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Energizer, 2007

60x99"

Depicts 170,000 disposable Energizer batteries, equal to fifteen minutes of Energizer battery production.

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If 170,000 batteries were depicted at their real size, the print would need to be 26x43 feet, as shown here. To depict one year of Energizer disposable battery production (six billion batteries) would require a print 26 feet high by 146 miles long.