Chris Jordan’s series of large scale photographs is entitled Running the Numbers: An American Self Portrait, a frightening view of the statistics of consumption. How many cell phones are retired every day? 426,000. Two million plastic bottles are used by Americans every 5 minutes. And 60,000 plastic bags are used every 5 seconds. Other stats covered by Jordan’s are cigarettes, painkillers, handguns and children without health insurance. The images have been made up of many smaller photographs and as abstract as they are, are more concrete than the numbers on their own.

Artist: Chris Jordan
+ chrisjordan.com

Running the Numbers: An American Self Portrait is on at the Paul Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles till October 20.