Running the Numbers
An American Self-Portrait
This new series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. 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.
My only caveat about this series is that the prints must be seen in person to be experienced the way they are intended. As with any large artwork, their scale carries a vital part of their substance which is lost in these little web images. Hopefully the JPEGs displayed here might be enough to arouse your curiosity to attend an exhibition, or to arrange one if you are in a position to do so. The series is still in its early stages, and new images will be posted as they are completed, so please stay tuned.
~cj, January 2007
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Cigarettes, 2007
60x82"
Depicts 65,000 cigarettes, equal to the number of American teenagers under age eighteen who become addicted to cigarettes every month.
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Detail at actual size:
Jet Trails, 2007
60x96"
Depicts 10,000 jet trails, equal to the number of commercial flights in the US every eight hours.
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Detail at actual size:
Cell Phones, 2007
60x100"
Depicts 426,000 cell phones, equal to the number of cell phones retired in the US every day.
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Detail at actual size:
Pain Killers, 2007
60x80"
Depicts 213,000 Vicodin pills, equal to the number of emergency room visits yearly in the US related to misuse or abuse of prescription pain killers.
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Handguns, 2007
60x92"
Depicts 29,569 handguns, equal to the number of gun-related deaths in the US in 2004.
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Detail at actual size:
Paper Bags, 2007
60x80"
Depicts 1.14 million brown paper supermarket bags, the number used in the US every hour.
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Plastic Bags, 2007
60x72"
Depicts 60,000 plastic bags, the number used in the US every five seconds.
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Detail at actual size:
Denali Denial, 2006
60x75"
Depicts 24,000 logos from the GMC Yukon Denali, equal to six weeks of sales of that model SUV in 2004.
Detail at actual size (this is the far left corner of the lake):
Prison Uniforms, 2007
10x23 feet in six vertical panels
Depicts 2.3 million folded prison uniforms, equal to the number of Americans incarcerated in 2005.
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Cans Seurat, 2007
60x92"
Depicts 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds.
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Detail at actual size:
Office Paper, 2007
60x87"
Depicts 30,000 reams of office paper, or 15 million sheets, equal to the amount of office paper used in the US every five minutes.
Detail at actual size:
Valve Caps, 2006
10x25 feet in five vertical panels
Depicts 3.6 million tire valve caps, one for each new SUV sold in the US in 2004.
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Detail at actual size:
Ben Franklin, 2007
8.5 feet wide by 10.5 feet tall in three horizontal panels
Depicts 125,000 one-hundred dollar bills ($12.5 million), the amount our government spends every hour on the war in Iraq.
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Detail at actual size:
Shipping Containers, 2007
60x100"
Depicts 75,000 shipping containers, the number of containers processed through American ports every day.
Detail at actual size:
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