Running the Numbers

Statistics can be dauting and dry - 1.000.000 trees cut down every year; 2.000.000 plastic bottles used every five minutes. The photographer Chris Jordan bring these numbers to life in manipulated digital photographs that are at once impressive and shocking. A landscape of toothpicks, each representing a felled tree, stretches into the horizon; a maze of plastic cups reveals how many are used each day on aeroplanes; fashioned from soda cans, a replica of a Seurat masterpiece becomes a lesson in waste; and thousands of Barbie dolls - representing the number of breast augmentation operations performed each year - combine to depict a woman's torso. This book, manufactured from recycled materials, aims to help the reader to grasp visually the potential consequences of the culture of waste.