Chris Jordan: Wonders of Industrial Wasteland

Seattle-based photographer Chris Jordan makes beautiful images of an unlikely subject—industrial waste. For his series Running the Numbers and Intolerable Beauty, on view at Vancouver’s Winsor Gallery through Saturday, March 2, Jordan sought out some the largest industrial waste facilities in the United States. There, he photographed the high-tech leftovers of contemporary consumer culture—diodes, cellphone chargers and circuit boards—and fashioned large-format digital images that draw attention to the awesome daily throwaway numbers of the objects. A circuit board looks like a cityscape; jet trails in the sky become a criss-cross labyrinth. Distorted perspectives, repeating forms and disorienting scales suggest abstract landscapes where a pile of sawdust can turn into the mass of a mountain. In some instances, Jordan creates elaborate studio sets for photographs that portray a specific statistical numbers, like the two million plastic beverage bottles used every five minutes south of the border. (3025 Granville St, Vancouver BC)