[World Environment Day] Running the numbers

If you ever pondered the immensity of waste under capitalism this new exhibition in New York has a lot to say in way of enabling comprehension. This image below is made from aluminum cans but to fathom it in its massive context you need to go visit the exhibition images.





Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 426,000 cell phones retired every day. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. Go VISIT>