Critical analysis Chris Jordan is an artist and photographer based in Seattle, Washington, Born in 1963. Chris Jordan is showing a new series of images called ‘Running the Numbers’ starting in LA. ‘Running the Numbers’ features images based on specific quantities, generally large numbers of consumer products we typically don't think about, where the statistics are so large, we generally can't visualize their scale., "Plastic Bags, 2007" is the image I am interested in, it depicts 60,000 plastic bags (according to Jordan, this is the number used in the US every five seconds) The image I am looking out is from the series of ‘Running the numbers’, it is displayed as both a set of tree images showing different stages of zoomed in of a large image and as a video. ‘Plastic Bags 2007’ is a image of 66,000 plastic bags, the same amount that are used every 5 seconds in U.S, it looks as if one image of plastic bags has been duplicated to make the amount needed, you can tell this because the same yellow bags appears several times almost in a pattern, same with the grey bag. When the image is zoomed out at the most it can the image is very ambiguous and you can't really tell what it is, it’s only when it begins to slowly zoom in you can tell it is plastic bags, until the point of being zoomed all the way in it it very clear they are plastic bags, it is how the photo begins hard to work out that makes it work so well, the viewer wants to wait for it to zoom in to see what it is. I think this video is a social comment that starts out as ambiguous and you can't tell what you are looking at, but only when someone makes you look at it more you see the extent of waste we produce in just plastic bags. I think this is an abstract video that portrays an important message that needs to be addressed. I’m unsure how this image is made but I think it is one image of plastic bags that has been duplicated to create a larger scale image. I think the use of the light colours in this video is interesting because it is simple, and that works best, as if Jordan is trying to show that we don’t need to use bright colours to attract attention to something, he uses the zooming in idea to do that. The shapes of the bags are distorted, they are all scrunched up and pressed together, almost looking wet and that's why there are all staying down in the way they are. This creates wrinkle lines in the bad that when zoomed in on makes it more obvious that they are plastic bags. These wrinkle lines also create a texture to the image, it looks as if it would feel sort of rough. As the full frame is full of plastic bags it is hard to see what type of lighting is used, there are not really any apparent shadows or highlights and the image looks fairly flat, it could be naturally lit of a bright day because the image is bright. The thing that strikes me the most about this image is the use of the zooming in and out, it makes the viewer want to watch it to see what the objects are, therefore sort of prompting them to see the message. Also how flat the image is is interesting, it’s taken from a bird's eye view. Inspiration taken
I am going to look into using the zoom video concept and experiment with my own images to create an outcome similar. I am going to perhaps start from a small detail from larger waste like a washing machine or car and span out to show the full thing. In doing this I intend to catch the viewer's attention. It will show how we discard large amounts of large waste without paying any thought the the environmental impact.
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A2 unit I will publish my progress weekly as I work through my unit and share what inspires me and any commercial work I do. Archives
March 2017
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