Intolerable Beauty — Portraits of American Mass Consumption
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 10.19.05
Chris Jordan takes pictures of garbage. He says "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."
We find the photographs stunningly beautiful, which is certainly not our usual reaction to looking at garbage. View this collection at ::Chris Jordan Photography
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Today's dumps are the mines of the future.
I saw his exhibit about a month ago at the Yossi Milo Gallery in NYC. Incredible photography with a mission! Even more provocative in person.
I'm with AJ, I heard once someone thought we would run out of steel. I guess they didn't take into account that we recycle it.
Powerful photos, but none of them are of garbage.
Most of the 'consumed' items in Jordan's work are destined for recycling, which brings up a great point; never buying is better than recycling.
The last numbers I read state that less than 6% (six percent) of the material and energy flows that go into the production of a product remain in the actual product six months after it is sold. In addition, only 2% (two percent) of the waste stream in this country is recyled.
What those images show is the tip of the waste iceberg, and it doesn't look like most of that stuff is going to be turned into new products any time soon, especially the electronic waste.
Well cars are quite a bad example. Most cars in the USA are recycled, and the system is surprisingly good. First cars are picked for usable parts, whole assembled airbags, radios, doors, glass etc are reused in the repair industry. Then in most yards the engine is removed and parts pulled too. Finally the remaining frame is crushed, shredded and melted for steel. Tires, batteries and other parts are seperated out as well for seperate recycling.
NOT ALL CARS are properly recycled, but most are.
What you should be worried about is appliances, electronics and computers. Few people take em apart properly to recycle em.
Techista is right: Chris was able to photograph those homogeneous piles of materials precisely because they had been collected for recycling. It's the exponentially larger volume of stuff we don't see that should worry us.
Re recycling rates: according to the EPA, 30.6 percent of municipal solid waste was recycled in 2003. Better than Tod's rate (above), but still a long way to go.