Chris Jordan Photographs Plastic Inside Dead Birds
Photojournalist Chris Jordan's latest stunning/sobering project, called "Midway, Message from the Gyre," is a series of photos of dead birds, stuffed full of plastic trash.
No, it's not some kind of post-modern statement about man's relationship with nature and consumption, although it does deliver a pretty strong message on that topic.
The Midway Journey is a project Jordan undertook with four other media artists to document the effect of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch on the birds of the Midway Atoll in the Pacific, 2,000 miles away from the nearest continent.
As a subject to show how pervasive and invasive plastic has become, Jordan and his team photographed the decomposing bodies of baby albatrosses on the atoll. As the flesh and feathers decayed, huge quantities of brightly colored plastic are revealed in the stomach cavities of the birds.
The team did not add or arrange any of the plastic, so when you look at the pictures and see orange and blue bottle caps, a tangled mass of luminescent green fishing line, or in one sickening case, a vividly red lighter, you are observing exactly what was inside the baby albatross when it died.
The images seem too dramatic to be real, and Jordan wisely addressed this issue in advance, preparing a code of ethics and rules that he and his team followed. (He was a lawyer, in a past life. Smart guy.)
For more info on the project, check out the Midway Journey site.
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