After a half-day out shooting some personal work w/ Ben, we stopped by the Allen Art Museum at Oberlin College to check out the new solo show by photographer Chris Jordan, Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait, which opened today.
The highlight of the exhibit are Jordan's 14 large scale images in which he confronts quantitative statistics about contemporary American culture along the lines of mass consumption, waste, the environment, public health and social justice:

--Plastic Bottles, 2007: a 60" x 120" print showing 2 million plastic bottles, the amount used in the U.S. every five minutes
--Skull with Cigarette, 2007: inspired by Van Gogh's Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette, Jordan's 72" x 108" version details 200,000 packs of cigarettes, equal to the number of smoking deaths in the U.S. every six months
--Ben Franklin, 2007: an immense 144" x 108" three-paneled arrangement of 125,000 $100 bills, or $12.5 million, the amount of money the U.S. gov't spends per hour on the war in Iraq

The numbers are startling, and Jordan plays that into his grandiose image presentations and uses it to provoke our responses. In his own words:

"Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society. My underlying desire is to emphasize the role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible and overwhelming."

Ultimately what this issue boils down to is our personal roles, opinions and actions as part of a consumer society. Jordan's photographs force us to confront this reality and evaluate whatever extent each of us knowingly or willingly participate in, and by extension propagate the values and ramifications of, such a society.
The show runs until 8 June. Coinciding w/ the opening, Jordan will give an artist lecture Wednesday at 5pm at the museum. The lecture and the museum are both free and open to the public.