Chris Jordan
Chris Jordan: A Life Dedicated to Environmental Activism and Artistic Expression
Full Name and Common Aliases
Chris Jordan is the full name of this renowned artist, author, and environmental activist. He is commonly known by his first name, Chris.
Birth and Death Dates
Chris Jordan was born on August 14, 1967. Unfortunately, he passed away on April 28, 2022, at the age of 54, leaving behind a legacy that continues to inspire and educate people worldwide.
Nationality and Profession(s)
Chris Jordan was an American artist, author, and environmental activist. His work spanned multiple disciplines, including photography, sculpture, and writing.
Early Life and Background
Born in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Chris grew up surrounded by the natural beauty of the Southwest. This early exposure to the majesty of the desert landscape had a profound impact on his life's work. Jordan's family moved frequently during his childhood, which allowed him to experience diverse cultures and environments. He developed a strong connection with nature from an early age, which would later shape his artistic vision.
Major Accomplishments
Chris Jordan's accomplishments are numerous, but some of the most significant include:
Producing over 35 large-scale art projects that focus on environmental issues, such as consumerism, waste management, and climate change.
Collaborating with various organizations to create public installations, exhibitions, and performances that raise awareness about pressing ecological concerns.
Publishing several books, including Infrared: A Brief History of the Future and Running Out, which showcase his photography and writing on environmental topics.Notable Works or Actions
Some of Chris Jordan's most notable works include:
Midway: Message from the Gyre: a large-scale installation featuring photographs taken in the Midway Atoll, highlighting the devastating impact of plastic pollution on marine life.
Running Out: a book and exhibition that explores the consequences of human consumption and waste management through images of discarded objects.Impact and Legacy
Chris Jordan's work has had a significant impact on the environmental movement. His art and writing have inspired numerous people to think critically about their relationship with nature and to take action against destructive practices.
Educating the public: Chris's work provides a unique platform for discussing complex ecological issues in an accessible way.
Influencing policy changes: his installations, exhibitions, and writings have helped raise awareness among policymakers and industry leaders.
Empowering activism: Jordan's art encourages people to become engaged citizens and advocates for environmental protection.
Why They Are Widely Quoted or Remembered
Chris Jordan is widely quoted and remembered because of the impact his work has had on raising awareness about environmental issues. His dedication to using art as a tool for social change continues to inspire new generations of artists, activists, and thinkers.
Quotes by Chris Jordan
Finding meaning in global mass phenomena can be difficult because the phenomena themselves are invisible, spread across the earth in millions of separate places. There is no Mount Everest of waste that we can make a pilgrimage to and behold the sobering aggregate of our discarded stuff, seeing and feeling it viscerally with our senses.
My work is about the behaviors that we all engage in unconsciously on a collective level. And what I mean by that, it's the behaviors that we're in denial about and the ones that operate below the surface of our daily awareness. And as individuals, we all do these things, all the time, every day.
I think of myself as a translator. I just change the dry, unfeeling language of data into a visual language that allows for feeling.
If you sit down among hundreds of thousands of albatrosses in a field, pretty soon you'll be completely surrounded by them, as they come walking up toward us and nibble on our shoelaces and just look right at us out of curiosity.
I'm not against shock and horror. In fact, I really belive in facing the dark realities of our time as the first step in coming out of denial. So we have to look into the darkness.
How do we change as a culture, and how do we each individually take responsibility for the one piece of the solution that we are in charge of, and that is our own behavior?
When I learned about this tragedy that's happening in Midway - you know, these birds whose stomachs are filled with handfuls of our waste - I just felt drawn there magnetically.
We've lost our sense of outrage, our anger, and our grief about what's going on in our culture right now, what's going on in our country, the atrocities that are being committed in our names around the world. They've gone missing; these feelings have gone missing.
I don't think I played the way I could have. I definitely think I could have given him a better challenge than I did, ... He got up 3-0 and I think I only won one or two points. I double faulted the first four of my service points. I didn't feel all that nervous. But I never really hit it the way I wanted.
Everyone contributed. This was a big win for us. We've been working really hard and we have some big goals for this year.