2.3 Million Prison Uniforms

by Matt Kelley · 2009-01-17 06:51:00 -0500
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In his work, American artist Chris Jordan aims to create a visual representation of the shocking, disturbing excess of our world. He makes beautiful images about the huge numbers we often tend to ignore, and much of his works focuses on social issues - addiction, waste, justice and more. In the image above, he created an image of 2.3 million prison uniforms, one for each American prisoner in 2005 (the number is higher now).

The piece above is a detail, you can see the full size of the five-panel print below. In the print, each uniform is the size of a nickel on its side. To show 2.3 million with any detail, the artist had to make five panels 25 feet by 10 feet.

In a 2008 Ted Talk, Jordan says:

"America has the largest percentage of its population in prison of any country on Earth... One out of four humans in prison are Americans in prison in our country."

Two point three million is a hard number to wrap your head around.

Matt Kelley is the Online Communications Manager at the Innocence Project and a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Follow him on Twitter @mattjkelley.
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