Chris Jordan is a photographer who focused on creating beautiful colorful images for 20 years. He began to think that his artwork wasn’t relevant or cutting edge. He wasn’t ready to let go of beauty, but he found a beautiful abstract composition of color in compressed bales of garbage. He enlarged the image and hung it on the wall in his studio. A friend and well known photographer suggested to him that he had found relevance in this “macabre portrait of America.” This exchange changed the direction of Jordan’s artwork. Jordan’s concept is to show the enormity of the waste that is produced in the world by our consumption of products.
Initially, he wanted to give a sense of the scale of the waste. He utilized some design techniques like only showing a sliver of sky or ground and having the objects extend off the picture plane. Not satisfied with the sense of scale he was creating, he decided to photograph groups of objects and then stitch them together using Photoshop to create large scale patterns. The objects were photographed at extremely high resolutions, so that even though a patterned image is huge, when you inspect the artwork from a nose’s length you can see accurate detail. Finally, he evolved to photographing individual objects. Go to http://www.chrisjordan.com/gallery/rtn/#moon. Click on the image. There is something fascinating for you to see.
I learned all of this first hand from the artist at IMAS last Sat. It was so interesting I wish I could give you all the details. Jordan highlights an important issue for artists. It is not enough to focus solely on the elements of design in your artwork. In order to take it to the next level, and become an internationally recognized artist, you have to make it conceptually relevant. That, combined with the development of cutting edge technique, makes him a singularly unique artist.
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| The ends of box cars make up the pattern |