Photographer and environmentalist Chris Jordan takes questions from SMU students at the Tate Forum in Hughes-Trigg ballroom yesterday evening. The next Tate lecturer will be Nicholas D. Kristof. (Stuart Palley)
Chris Jordan, an internationally known photographic artist and activist, came to the SMU campus to share some of his works entitled “Running the Numbers,” which is exhibited in the United States and Europe.
His work has been featured in magazines, newspapers and television programs all over the world. Jordan has appeared on national television programs and is currently a spokesperson for National Geographic Earth Day 2008.
Although Jordan came to share some of his work with the audience, he also wanted to share his experiences leading up to his current career path.
Chris Jordan began the lecture by opening up about his dark and depressing past when he was working as an unhappy corporate lawyer.
“I even contemplated suicide…I wanted so much to find a way…” Jordan said.
Jordan found relief in taking photographs of places many people would never even dream of looking such as landfills full of trash and old rusty pipes hidden in alley corners around his hometown in Seattle. Jordan felt as if he could relate to his photographs because they were “unnoticed by the world,” which is how he felt at the time.
Jordan took photographs of trash because he had a “cosmic color theory” in which the trash possessed.
One photograph in particular which was of a pile of trash at a landfill that looked like a tidal wave of garbage caught the eye of his friends who began discussing how the photo represented the American consumption.
Jordan became inspired and began taking photographs of small pieces of trash and used digital construction to manipulate the photograph and duplicate simple items such as a pile of cell phones or light bulbs and create them to look like the earth or even an ocean to show his audience how much of that item is being consumed.
An example of Jordan’s work includes a picture of a composite of duplicated photos to create 210 billion bottles, which looks like an ocean to show the number of plastic bottles consumed yearly.
“If we can feel the horror of these issues together then the collective intelligence will rise,” Jordan said.
Jordan has been questioned on whether or not he will ever create something positive instead of showing the mass consumption of the American people, but he believes that by showing these images, it will cause people to become aware of the issue at hand.
Jordan ended the lecture by saying, “What an amazing, inspiring, hopeful time to be alive.”
