Chris Jordan photographs from "Midway: Message from the Gyre" portfolio on view at SJMA

July 12, 2010 by San Jose Museum...

A lawyer turned environmental activist, Chris Jordan sees his work as a way to shed light on the silent degradation of nature ordinarily invisible to the eye. He traveled to the Midway Atoll, an extremely remote island in the North Pacific Ocean, 2,000 miles from the nearest land. Although the Island is a wildlife refuge, it has proved vulnerable to manmade pollution.
 
 
 
 
The albatrosses that make their home on the atoll scavenge to feed their young, plucking things from the water that look like food and feeding them to their chicks. Eventually the chicks die, and the contents of their stomachs reveal the cause of death. When Jordan undertook this portfolio in September 2009, it was extremely important to him that he create an objective document of what he observed. This form of environmental reportage is similar to that of o Salgado.
 
 
 

Chris Jordan, "Midway: Message from the Gyre," 2009
Photographic Inkjet Prints. Gift of the Lipman Family Foundation.