Artist Chris Jordan has recently unveiled his brilliant art series “Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait”, where he takes a look at American culture via consumption statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of some object, such as 15,000,000 sheets of office paper (which is actually 5 minutes of America’s paper usage) and 106,000 aluminum cans (30 seconds of canned drinks consumption). The images are striking, putting statistical data on overconsumption in an easily identifiable and visual context. Jordan’s caveat however, is that viewers attempt to see them in person, where their scale is better experienced than through JPEGs displayed on a screen.

See much more: Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portait gallery