Wake Up America -- Killing the Albatross -- and what else?

The following may be difficult to look at. It is not only an image of a decaying Albatross, but more so a picture of the ramifications of how we live. These images are beautifully done. They make me sad, and act as a reminder to live more carefully in what I consume and throw away.

Chris Jordan -- Photographic Arts






from his website:

"On Midway Atoll, a remote cluster of islands more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent, the detritus of our mass consumption surfaces in an astonishing place; inside the stomachs of thousands of dead baby albatrosses. The nesting chicks are fed lethal quantities of plastic by their parents, who mistke the floating trash for food as they forage over the vast polluted Pacific Ocean.

For me, kneeling over the carcasses is like looking into a macabre mirror. These birds reflect back an appallingly emblematic result of the collective trance of our consumerism and runaway industrial growth. Like the albatross, we first-world humans find ourselves lacking the ability to discern anymore what is nourishing from what is toxic to our lives and our spirits. Choked to death on our waste, the mythical albatross calls upon us to recognize that our greatest challenge lies not out there, but in here."

-- cj
Seattle, February 2011

Go here for more photographic images of trash and what he has to say about it.