Glass, Seattle

Chris Jordan is a photographer who creates large, detailed images of waste from modern life. His work features broken glass, cell phones, cigarette butts, and other thrown-away materials. From a distance the images look like colorful patterns or abstract art. A closer look shows the individual objects that make up the composition.

Jordan’s photographs help people understand how much waste people produce. The large number of discarded objects shows how small choices can add up over time. Bright colors and designs draw viewers in before they realize what the images are really made of.  

At first glance Glass, Seattle may appear to be a vibrant surface filled with green, brown, yellow, and red shapes. As viewers spend more time with the image, they realize it is made up of thousands of bottles and pieces of broken glass. This shift in perspective helps people see the scale of glass waste in a new way.

All of my work is meant to evoke a whole bunch of different layers of discord between the attraction and repulsion that we feel toward our consumer habits and our consumer lives.

Chris Jordan

Glass, Seattle is part of Jordan’s project titled Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption (2003 to 2005). The series features documentary photographs of real industrial yards, landfills, and recycling centers. Through these images Jordan encourages people to think about how their daily choices affect the world around them.

I’m just becoming more and more aware of this truly profound responsibility that we carry as individuals. And it’s a responsibility not only to ourselves and to our families, but to the billions of people who still have to come in the future who will be dealing with our legacy.

Chris Jordan