Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption   Exploring around our country’s shipping ports and industrial yards, where the accumulated detritus of our consumption is exposed to view like eroded layers in the Grand Canyon, I find evidence of a slow-motion apocalypse in progress. I am appalled by these scenes, and yet also drawn into them with awe and fascination. The immense scale of our consumption can appear desolate, macabre, oddly comical and ironic, and even darkly beautiful; for me its consistent feature is a staggering complexity. The pervasiveness of our consumerism holds a seductive kind of mob mentality. Collectively we are committing a vast and unsustainable act of taking, but we each are anonymous and no one is in charge or accountable for the consequences. I fear that in this process we are doing irreparable harm to our planet and to our individual spirits. As an American consumer myself, I am in no position to finger wag; but I do know that when we reflect on a difficult question in the absence of an answer, our attention can turn inward, and in that space may exist the possibility of some evolution of thought or action. So my hope is that these photographs can serve as portals to a kind of cultural self-inquiry. It may not be the most comfortable terrain, but I have heard it said that in risking self-awareness, at least we know that we are awake. ~cj _____________     Print Information For All Three Series   PRINT TYPES Images larger than 60" on the short dimensions are made as digital Type-C prints; those 60" and smaller are archival pigmented inkjet prints. PRINT EDITIONS Print editions for the Intolerable Beauty and Katrina series are limited to nine prints per image, plus two artist proofs. Print #1 in each edition is reserved, and the two artist proofs are available only to major collections and museums. Some editions are sold out, but artist proofs are still available for all images. Prints of the Running the Numbers series are made in editions of six with two artist proofs. PURCHASING PRINTS Prints are available for purchase only through the galleries that represent Chris's work. For more information about print availability, pricing, etc., please contact any of the galleries listed on the "contacts" page.   Exhibition of the Katrina series at PhotoEspana, Madrid, 2006

In Katrina's Wake: Portraits of Loss from an Unnatural Disaster   This series, photographed in New Orleans in November and December of 2005, portrays the cost of Hurricane Katrina on a personal scale. Although the subjects are quite different from those in my earlier Intolerable Beauty series, this project is motivated by the same concerns about our runaway consumerism. 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. Never before have the cumulative effects of our consumerism become so powerfully focused into a visible form, like the sun's rays narrowed through a magnifying glass. Almost 300,000 Americans lost everything they owned in the Katrina disaster. The question in my mind is whether we are all responsible in some degree. The hurricane’s damage has been further amplified by other human causes, including failures of preparedness and response on many levels; existing poverty conditions; levee problems that were mired in political maneuverings; poor environmental and wetlands practices that left some areas more vulnerable; and the conspicuous absence of federal resources that were already being used in the Bush Administration’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. From that perspective, my hope is that these images might encourage some reflection on the part that we each play, and the loss that we all suffer, when a preventable catastrophe of this magnitude happens to the people of our own country. Katrina has illuminated our interconnectedness, and it makes our personal accountability as members of a conscious society ever more difficult to deny. ~cj ________________ Chris's book of this work is titled "In Katrina's Wake, Portraits of Loss from an Unnatural Disaster," published by Princeton Architectural Press in New York. This book features Chris's photographs along with essays by writers Bill McKibben and Susan Zakin, and poetry by Victoria Sloan Jordan. This book is now sold out, and 100% of Chris's proceeds were donated to Gulf Coast hurricane relief charities.