Local photographer Chris Jordan has shifted his sharp, poetic focus from the wastelands of American consumerism—images of landfills of discarded cell phones, crushed cars, or computer chips—to the ruins of New Orleans in his latest book about last year's hurricane disaster, In Katrina's Wake: Portraits of Loss From an Unnatural Disaster. He is also one of four photographers taking part in the current group show of images from New Orleans at G. Gibson Gallery. As the Ballard-based artist explains to Seattle Weekly art critic Sue Peters, his new subject is not really such a departure from his previous themes.
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Chris Jordan See the photographer's Web site for a list of all his upcoming shows and other events, www.chrisjordan.com.
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Seattle Weekly:I'm familiar (and impressed) with your previous series of photos about American consumption, Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption. How did you move your focus from that subject to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina? Or is it a move? Are the two topics connected? If so, how?
Chris Jordan: My Katrina series is an extension of my earlier consumerism work, on a more personal level. There is evidence to suggest that Katrina was not an entirely natural event like an earthquake or tsunami. The 2005 hurricane season's extraordinary severity can be linked to global warming, which America contributes to in disproportionate measure through our extravagant consumer and industrial practices. We consume a third of the world's oil supply, despite being only 5 percent of the world's population; hence, more than any other nation, we are responsible for global warming. Katrina serves as evidence that global warming is no longer an abstract academic issue about distant glaciers; it has now arrived on our doorstep and has destroyed the homes and belongings of 300,000 people in our own country. My newly released book, In Katrina's Wake, contains an essay on this subject by author Bill McKibben.
Why did you go to New Orleans? Do you have any ties there?
I went down to New Orleans for several reasons. Primarily, it was because of the disconnect I was experiencing between the reports in the news about what was happening down there, and the statements being made by our federal government. Bush, in his typical way, appeared disengaged and in denial, reading his cheesy canned statements about how everything was fine while tens of thousands of our citizens were suffering in a way that would make the leaders of a third-world country cringe. It was clear to me that a monumental tragedy was happening on our Gulf Coast, and our government was doing the minimum it could get away with in terms of responding. And after a couple of months, even the media left the Gulf Coast behind and returned to more important stories about Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. By sometime in late October, Katrina had all but dropped off the national radar screen, while people I know who live there were telling me horror stories about the conditions. I felt a draw to go down there and see for myself, and to maybe capture something that the media had missed.
What did you hope to capture in your photographs? Do you feel you have succeeded? (Is it possible to succeed?)
In terms of whether my Katrina series is successful, it definitely doesn't portray the scale of the devastation; that can be experienced only by going there. Early on, I realized that the extent of the disaster was fundamentally unphotographable, like the Grand Canyon; it was just too huge and complex and overwhelming. So I focused on a specific aspect of the tragedy that held meaning for me: the personal details of people's belongings strewn around the landscape. There were other aspects of the disaster that I could not photograph, such as the possibility that it was caused by global warming, and the implication that we were each individually responsible in some degree. To address this issue and some of the social issues around the aftermath, I contacted a couple of writers (Bill McKibben and Susan Zakin) and asked them to contribute essays. I also asked my wife, Victoria, (a poet) to contribute some poems, which she did. You will see that those contributions add layers of dimension to the book that make it more than just a photo monograph. My hope with this book was to reach a general audience rather than having it be a typical fine-art monograph that reaches only the art world. So there is no curatorial-type essay; the book is not intended to be about me or my art, but about the Katrina disaster. My photographs are intended to be illustrations that are readable by a general audience. If they also function as art, then that's fine, but that was not the intention behind the project. So far, this work has been reaching a wide public audience, so maybe in that respect, you could say the project is having some success.
You focus your lens on elements of modern American life that (should) give one pause. Though your photos are often beautifully composed or executed, their subject matter is troubling and provocative. I'm assuming that this is a purposeful tension, yes?
The tension you noticed in my work between beauty and the not-so-beautiful is intentional, and it is something I am very interested in. I attempt to use beauty as a tool for seduction, to draw the viewer into territory they might otherwise be reluctant to enter. The underlying message in my work is not so pleasant, and to get it requires self-reflection and the overcoming of denial. The aesthetic aspects of my images—the high degree of fine detail, the repeating patterns and colors—are my way of inviting the viewer in close, to stay a while. Maybe during that time the deeper message might have a chance to seep in.
