Running the Numbers

This new series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: 2.5 million plastic bottles, the number used in the US every hour; 29,569 handguns, equal to the number of gun-related deaths in the US in 2004. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 426,000 cell phones retired every day. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs.