Super Eco

Photo credit: Chris Jordan

The e-mailbox of a green writer sometimes resembles a statistical landfill, overflowing with "shocking statistics" on topics designed to alarm, dismay, amaze and otherwise provoke coverage. We're used to scanning, analyzing, poking and prodding at tidbits that float across the most unlikely of Stumbled-Upon web sites. Still, a picture's worth a thousand words—and Chris Jordan's Running the Numbers paints graphic pictures of our consumer society that simply cannot be ignored.

"Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: 15 million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (30 seconds of can consumption); and so on," writes Jordan. "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."

Click over to Jordan's web site to see the macro-micro vision of Running the Numbers II: Portraits of mass global culture or the stark picture of Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American mass consumption. You can visit the original Running the Numbers exhibit as it travels to these locations across the country:

Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History May 15 - Sep 11, 2009
Pacific Science Center, Seattle Sep, 2009 - Jan, 2010
Haverford College Art Gallery, Haverford, Penn. Jan - Mar, 2010
Austin Museum of Art, Austin, Texas May 22 - Aug 15, 2010
College of Charleston, S.C. Fall 2010
Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon Jan - Mar, 2011
Whatcom Museum of History and Art, Bellingham, Wash. Apr- July 2011