Documenting Pollution by Chris Jordan

Chris Jordan's photographs of albatross chicks were made in Fall of 2009 on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific Ocean. 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, Jordan did move not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs. Nor anything was 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. To see Jordan's pictures please visit his site here.