Depicts 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds.

These three images are a part of a series called “Intollerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption” by Photographer/artist Chris Jordan.  In this series Jordan uses statistics about some horrible amount waste that the US has to become his material.  Each piece is some gross amount of plastic bottles, money, paper or something of the sorts. Make sure to check out some of the statistics used.

This is Chris Jordan’s statement on the piece:

Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption

Exploring around our country’s shipping ports and industrial yards, where the accumulated detritus of our consumption is exposed to view like eroded layers in the Grand Canyon, I find evidence of a slow-motion apocalypse in progress. I am appalled by these scenes, and yet also drawn into them with awe and fascination. 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.

The pervasiveness of our consumerism holds a seductive kind of mob mentality. 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. I fear that in this process we are doing irreparable harm to our planet and to our individual spirits.

As an American consumer myself, I am in no position to finger wag; but I do know that when we reflect on a difficult question in the absence of an answer, our attention can turn inward, and in that space may exist the possibility of some evolution of thought or action. So my hope is that these photographs can serve as portals to a kind of cultural self-inquiry. It may not be the most comfortable terrain, but I have heard it said that in risking self-awareness, at least we know that we are awake.