Photos in Oberlin illustrate our consumption numbers

The Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College is having a Malthusian moment. Thomas Malthus was the early 19th-century English economist who theorized that human populations always outgrow their food supplies, which leads to shortages followed by the four horsemen of war, pestilence, famine and plague.

With oil prices hitting $117 a barrel and riots over high food prices occurring in poor countries around the world, the spirit of Malthus seems to hover over the Allen’s exhibition of photographs by Seattle artist Chris Jordan.


Jordan is a former corporate lawyer who dumped his legal career in 2003 and made it his mission to depict the massive quantities of stuff used or consumed by Americans.

Jordan asserts on the basis of his research, for example, that Americans use 60,000 plastic bags every five seconds. To convey the sheer scale of that number, Jordan created a photograph that literally shows what 60,000 multicolored plastic bags would look like if gathered in one place. He did it by photographing smaller numbers of bags and then using digital technology to multiply them.

The result is eerily beautiful. The bags create an all-over pattern of soft pastels and grays, similar to an Abstract Expressionist or Color Field painting.

But the photograph also conveys a shock. It depicts a vast amount of trash that’s going to end up in a landfill somewhere or get released into the environment, where it could cause endless harm, given the nonbiodegradable nature of most plastics.

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