brennan + company architects

Paper Cups, 2008
60x96"
This is a detail of a print depicting 410,000 paper cups,
equal to the number of disposable hot-beverage
paper cups used in the US every fifteen minutes.

Photographer Chris Jordon has focused his camera on the issues of consumption. Wandering the ports and industrial areas of the world, he has captured the raw remains of our "taking." He has also constructed installations that represent measures of consumption that let us know just what it is we are doing.

The pervasiveness of our consumerism holds a seductive kind of mob mentality. Collectively we are committing a vast and unsustainable act of taking, but we each are anonymous and no one is in charge or accountable for the consequences. I fear that in this process we are doing irreparable harm to our planet and to our individual spirits. - Chris Jordon

We think he is one of the visual heroes of our time, forcing us to evaluate our responsibility, forcing us to make an inquiry of our own behaviors---the process that is most critical to finding solutions.