Chris Jordan (artist)

Works

Many of Jordan's works are created from photographs of garbage and mass consumption, a serendipitous technique which started when he visited an industrial yard to look at patterns of color and order. Jordan uses everyday commonalities such as a plastic cup and defines the blind unawareness involved in American consumerism. His work, while often unsettling, is a bold message about unconscious behaviors in our everyday lives, leaving it to the viewer to draw conclusions about the inevitable consequences which will arise from our habits.

Jordan's work can be grouped in the following series:

Midway project

Midway: Message from the Gyre (2009–2013) is a series of photographs depicting rotting carcasses of baby Laysan albatrosses filled with plastic. These birds nest on Midway Atoll and are being fed plastic by their parents, who find floating plastic in the middle of the ocean and mistake it for food. This is a part of an ongoing arts and media project called Midway Journey, which has its own website.

In relation to the Midway photographs, Jordan created another project that was going to be a documentary. It was about the pollution on Midway Atoll called "The Midway Film Project". The project was successfully funded on Kickstarter in 2012 with over $100,000 worth of donations. There has been little activity regarding the project (since 2014) although it was stated to be "in progress" as of 2016.