Consumption and Chris Jordan

A consumer culture is one whose economy is defined by the buying and spending of consumers. Our culture here in the United States in undeniably a consumer culture. We buy and buy without thinking of the consequences, especially environmental. Chris Jordan, an artist from Seattle, agrees. Jordan says that "Collectively we are committing a vast and unsustainable act of taking, but we each are anonymous and no one is in charge or accountable for the consequences." Jordan explores the phenomenon of American consumerism through his large scale works.  

Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption portrays several instances of mass consumption here in the United States. The image below, Cell phones, shows one of them. Here in the United States cell phones are second nature, I imagine now that children are not being passed a bottle, but a cell phone instead. Jordan's image shows the massive amounts of cell phones consumers have at one point or another purchased and used (just in Orlando, FL) and then thrown out. It's astonishing. Jordan describes this portrayal of mass consumption and the others in his collection perfectly, "The immense scale of our consumption can appear desolate, macabre, oddly comical and ironic, and even darkly beautiful; for me its consistent feature is a staggering complexity." Indeed, the immense scale of our consumption is worth taking a look at.
http://www.chrisjordan.com

Cell phones, Orlando 2004     44 x 82