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Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/898
144 MacDirectory
COVER STORY
fundamentally bad. I think that we aren't
feeling it enough," he explains, "We all
know we need to make a radical change
in our behavior as a culture and as
individuals. And in order to make a radical
change in anyone's behavior, you have to
feel something. It's kind of like falling in
love. When you fall in love, suddenly
there's this feeling you have that
motivates you to do things that you
otherwise wouldn't do...The information
we have is all in the form of statistics…
Trying to fall in love based on statistics?
It's sort of like trying to fall in love with a
person who you don't have a photograph
of them and the only thing that you know
about them is like, well, they drink this
much water per day and they ride their
bike this far per day."
Trying to make his audience fall in love
with an issue, hold themselves
accountable, and get motivated to act on
these lessons? These must be ambitious
photographs. How do you achieve this?
What is the magic behind these larger-
than-life prints?
Creating the Impossible
All of Jordan's pieces from "Running the
Numbers" show confounding quantities of
objects piled up or artistically composited
into mosaic reproductions of famous
works of art, such as 106,000 aluminum
cans making up Seurat's "Sunday
Afternoon on the Island of La Grande
Jatte." In the realm of standard
photography, however, actually capturing
the isolated number of items is
impossible. So how does he do it?
Though each piece is executed a little
differently, he completes them all with his
Nikon camera, a Mac Pro, a scanner, and
handy software such as Photoshop and
Photomosaic. These tools allow him to
make a photographically convincing
image of something that doesn't exist in
the real world, because, as he points out,
there's nowhere you can go and find
426,000 discarded cell phones. Our
country's waste streams are spread out
into thousands of little waste streams,
consequently making the problem
invisible to us.
To represent statistically accurate
quantities and create those infinite stacks
in his pictures, Jordan sets up a
controlled, framed shot of a smaller
quantity, roughly 200 items, and then
stirs them around for different shots.
With the resulting 150 images or so, all
identically lit and framed, he then digitally
stitches them together manually in
Photoshop. It's a tedious process to build
the huge photographic images, but it
does allow him the benefit of keeping
track of the numbers used. And, of
course, saves him the trouble of acquiring
the likes of 2.3 million prison uniforms.
For the recreation of famous works of art
by use of cigarette boxes for the Van
Gogh painting or aluminum cans for the
Seurat, Jordan photographs or scans the
items and keeps folders of each with
around 6 different versions with variations
of light and color. From there, his
Photomosaic software can generate the
image from these files based on sampling
the original work of art.
Each composition takes him anywhere
from one week to one month to
complete, and requires balancing the
math with the visual language. How big
the prints will have to be is determined by
the number value represented by the
statistic as well as the requirement that
each individual item in the shot must be
recognizable from a certain distance.
Many times the final product is surprising
even to Jordan.
His 2.3 million prison uniforms print
(representing the number of incarcerated
Americans in 2005) sized each uniform at
one sixteenth of an inch tall by one fourth
of an inch wide, about the width of a
nickel. The size of the final print? Bigger
than his house - 11 feet by 23 feet and
divided into six panels! That's what you
get from the country with the highest
prison population on Earth.
The Next Step
Chris Jordan isn't stopping here. He
already has plans for a series on the dire
state of the world's oceans, one on the
disheartening statistics from the war in
Iraq, and one to echo the ongoing crises
in Africa – from genocide in the region of
Darfur to mass poverty. These are all huge
issues that are without a doubt more
overwhelming than even Jordan's
photography may be able to capture. But
he hopes the pointed shots he creates can
send the emotional SOS message. Jordan
knows he can't save the world alone, but
he's optimistic the awe-inspiring
photography will connect the world to
those that can – all of us.
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