Wednesday, October 21, 2009

around our necks

I felt like crying and throwing up looking at Chris Jordan's horrifically beautiful photographs of albatross chicks on the Midway, but couldn't stop looking at them either.

From his website: "These photographs of albatross chicks were made just a few weeks ago on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.
To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world's most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent."


see more from this series and his incredible Running the Numbers series here.

8 comments:

Anne said...

What an unbelievable sight. So sad.

Steven said...

Truly, so sad.

Anonymous said...

Wow! You and I are on the same wavelength! Remember I mentioned a photographer who will be featured on my blog this coming Monday? Crazy!!!

abigail said...

crazy! I love his work.

I'm having a hard time functioning after seeing these- the cap for the toothpaste tube made me sad. The pen I used this morning made me sad. Heck, the buttons on my shirt made me sad. It's just so difficult to do no harm.

Grace said...

Depressing.

Amanda Wright said...

That is so awful!

Sahildeki Ev said...

So sad...I think all the species' babies are alike. Love to put things in their mouths.

Denise Fasanello said...

omg. I'm speechless