THE horrors of mass consumption are made painfully real in pictures of thousands of dead albatross chicks killed by eating plastic marine junk mistaken for food. Liu Xiaolin talks to the conservationist photographer.

Photographer Chris Jordan vividly remembers the heartbreaking scene of thousands of dead albatross chicks scattered about Midway Atoll, a wildlife refuge that provides no refuge at all from deadly plastic refuse.

When he cut open the bodies with scissors, he found bellies full of colorful plastic trash - cigarette lighters, bottle caps, toothbrushes, scraps of plastic bags and many other pieces of trash that choked the chicks or blocked their gullet so they starved to death. Their parents spotted the "food" and brought it back to feed their young. Adults can expel junk but chicks under six months old cannot.

"The scene was heartbreaking. All we found were dead baby albatrosses on the ground, not a single living one, just like a ghost island," Jordan recalled of his first visit in September 2009 to Midway Atoll (also called Midway Island/Islands) in the North Pacific Hawaiian archipelago. It's roughly midway between California and East Asia.

In a telephone interview from his US home in Seattle, Jordan spoke to Shanghai Daily about his conservation photography and discussed his upcoming exhibition in Shanghai about mass consumerism, titled "Running the Numbers." The works quantify consumerism's impact on the environment in stupefying mountains of plastic trash - bottles, plastic bags, cell phones. But he also fashions debris into works of beautiful, provocative art. But no dead birds.

Finding beauty in garbage

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Jordan uses a 60-megapixel medium-format digital camera system.

Since that first transformative trip, Jordan has made two more visits to Midway, exploring two islands. He is accompanied by a small team of conservationists, photographers, cameramen and his wife, Victoria Sloan Jordan. They are working on a documentary about the dying albatross.

He turns his lens on the birds and the unfolding environmental tragedy on the tranquil subtropical "paradise." The islands are famous because the decisive World War II Battle of Midway Island was fought there in June 1942.

Around three million birds live there, including the world's largest population of Laysan albatrosses, also known as or "gooney birds." Hawaiian monk seals, green sea turtles and spinner dolphins swim in the crystal blue lagoon.

But there's trouble in paradise, beyond the atoll.

In Jordan's photos, brilliantly colored plastic trash is exposed in the bellies of decaying chicks, often six or seven different items contrasting with the gray rib cage and gray and white feathers.

The majestic albatross, called the "monarch of the clouds" by Baudelaire, has the largest wingspan of any bird, from 2.5-3.5 meters. Of 21 recognized species, 19 are endangered, mostly by long-line fishing, predators in their breeding grounds - and plastic garbage that the birds mistake for fish, squid, crustaceans, carrion and other food.

In March, Jordan's series "Midway - Message from the Gyre" won the Prix Pictet, the world's first award for photography promoting sustainability.

Jordan's images "draw the viewer intimately into the horrors of global mass consumerism, reminding us that the consequences of our unchecked growth extend to every corner of the globe," according to the award's website.

The first time Jordan connected plastic pollution with Midway Atoll, he was talking to oceanographers and biologists about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a gyre of marine litter in the North Pacific Ocean. Containing millions tons of marine trash, the gyre is estimated to be as large as two states of Texas and sometimes called the "eighth continent."

Jordan's original plan was to visit the litter patch, but environmentalist Anna Cummins suggested Midway Atoll instead.

"You want to see the garbage in Pacific Ocean? Go to the Midway Islands!" he quoted her as saying. He took her advice.

"Standing on the island is like being in hell," Jordan said of the overwhelming scene of albatross carcasses on the Eastern Island, containing a spectacular wildlife refuge.

Scientists say 1.5 million endangered Laysan albatrosses inhabit the remote island. Adults roost there, both parents tend a single egg and every September adults soar over the ocean and bring back plastic debris that they mistake for food and feed to their young.

Around 40 percent of chicks die of multiple causes, including garbage. A chick only a few months old may consume seven or eight kinds of human junk and a third of the stomach may be filled with trash. Every year tens of thousands of chicks die on Midway, said Jordan.

"I feel completely hopeless," Jordan said.

After he went back to Seattle, he posted 50 heart-stopping photos online, setting off heated discussion.

"I'm getting nauseous watching this. I feel bad for every plastic cup, every plastic stupid thing I have ever used, am using now and will use in the future," commented one person. "Breathtaking views, heartbreaking truths," said another message on Jordan's team's website, midwayjourney.com.

Encouraged by the feedback, Jordan visited again last July.

"I didn't want to give up. I want to dig further and find some hope there," he told Shanghai Daily. "But this time, things got even more terrible."

When Jordan and his team got ashore they saw thousands of carcasses and dying chicks.

"It's is deeply painful to see this," he said.

They explored the entire island and came upon several hundred fledglings alive on fields, paths and roads. When Jordan saw a big flock of young birds flying off to test their wings, he mourned what he knew would ultimately be their "sad death" from ingested garbage.

Seeing them soar "was one of the most beautiful moments in my life," he said.

He and his team made a third visit in March, a week after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The wave swept across more than 60 percent of Midway's Eastern Island, site of the wildlife refuge, and 20 percent of Sand Island, killing thousands of albatrosses and other endangered species.

"During those two weeks, we saw hundreds thousands of albatrosses dying, meanwhile, hundreds thousands more were living and flying," Jordan said. "Midway Atoll is a complex mixture of sadness and love."

They saw juveniles performing an intricate courtship dance to find a mate before flying out to sea for food. Stuffed with plastic, chicks a few months old staggered on the beach, crashed into the sea and drowned. Their bodies washed up.

"Midway is like a metaphor. It mirrors how our lives are impacting this planet," said Jordan. "Albatrosses fly out to get what looks like food to them to feed their young, which actually kill them. For us human beings, our mass consumption is eating up the valuable natural resources on which we are living."

"Midway is a symbolic example and a sad reminder of a global issue. There's no real solution to the dying of the Midway albatross. The only way to save them is to start to save this world."

Jordan himself is a vegetarian, he rides a bicycle and wears second-hand clothes; he does the right things. He also enjoys spending time with his wife, son and dog, playing the piano and working in the garden. "But we all need to do more, including finding ways to act collectively," he said.

Jordan and his team are working on documentary titled "Midway" that is expected to be released next fall. He plans another three expeditions, the next one in September.

The team carries better cameras and equipment to document every phase of the albatross' life cycle. "The documentary will witness the horror and beauty of this place, to hold the heart of the tragedy, and the beauty and miracle of life on Midway," he said.

A San Francisco native, Jordan was born into a family of artists and became interested in photography at the age of 14. His painter mother made him a toy "lens" by cutting out a little window in a piece of cardboard. He walked around town looking through the window and composing pictures.

A year later, his father, a travelling photographer on the side, bought him a used camera for US$2. Jordan spent all his time and money on photography and later bought his first SLR camera.


Lawbooks or lens?

Though his heart lay with photography, Jordan went to law school and worked as a corporate lawyer for 11 years. "That was an unhappy period of my life. I felt very depressed because I wasn't interested in law," he said, adding that he went into law because he was afraid to take a risk with photography and fail at a young age.

In 2002, he left his white-collar safety net because he was afraid he was "not living life."

"I don't want my life filled with regrets when I look back," Jordan said.

He became a full-time freelance photographer "focusing the lens on beauty."

Unlike many other photographers, Jordan seeks "beauty in mundane or even unbeautiful things or places," such as garbage and waste. He has been exploring mass culture and its impact on the environment.

His 2003 work "Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption" depicts towering mountains and vast plains of discarded industrial products and debris in some of the largest US industrial waste facilities.

Those stunning images quickly gained national attention. Two years later he completed the "Intolerable Beauty" series and held his first solo exhibitions in Seattle, New York and Los Angeles. The works were shown in that year's Foto&Photo Festival in Italy.

Later, Jordan acquired an international reputation as a conservation artist and activist. He documented the environmental devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans in August 2005.


"Running the Numbers"

Date: July 16-August 14

Venue: Other Gallery, Rm 101, Bldg 9

Address: 50 Moganshan Rd, Shanghai