The MSU Department of Geography will highlight Geography Awareness Week by hosting an Inspirational Evening with Artist Chris Jordan.

Chris Jordan is an acclaimed artist and cultural activist based in Seattle. His work explores contemporary mass culture from a variety of photographic and conceptual perspectives, connecting the viewer viscerally to the enormity and power of humanity’s collective unconscious. Jordan’s images edge-walk the lines between art and activism, beauty and horror, abstraction and representation, the near and the far, the visible and the invisible.  His work asks us to look both inward and outward at the traumatized landscapes of our collective choices.

Jordan’s photographs have been exhibited around the world in solo and group exhibitions, and his recent awards include the 2011 Prix Pictet Commission Prize; the 2013 Human Security Award from the Center of Unconventional Security Affairs, UC Irvine; a 2011 Aaron Siskind Foundation Fellowship; and the 2010 Ansel Adams Award for Conservation Photography from the Sierra Club. In 2007 he participated in the Envisioning Change exhibition at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway, where he was presented with a Green Leaf Award by the United Nations. His work reaches an increasingly broad international audience through his exhibitions, books, website, interviews on radio and television, and speaking engagements and school visits all over the world.

Jordan’s work has been featured in magazines, newspapers, blogs, and documentary films around the world, and he has published four books: Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption (2005), In Katrina’s Wake: Portraits of Loss from an Unnatural Disaster (2006), Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait (2009), and most recently, Ushirikiano: Building a Sustanable Future in Kenya’s Northern Rangelands (2011). His large-scale prints are held in public and private art collections around the globe.

Currently, Chris is finishing up his first documentary film, Midway, which takes place on Midway Atoll, where tens of thousands of seabirds die each year from ingesting plastic from the polluted Pacific Ocean. Midway will take viewers on a lyrical guided tour into the depths of the astonishingly beautiful and tragic story of the albatross, inspiring us to connect on a deeper level with the miracle of our world and our own lives.

This event is sponsored by the MSU Department of Geography and the College of Social Science.