Chris Jordan at Paul Kopeikin

In the spirit of recycling, Seattle photographer Chris Jordan has found new use for other people's junk. For the works in his debut show in Los Angeles, he has taken pictures of various scrap heaps and dump sites, from the usual mix of cans and bottles to the high-tech graveyards reserved for last year's cell phones and circuit boards. Together these images make for an arresting critique of American consumerism. One print shows a vast field of broken bottles, punctuated by the occasional cork. Another features piles of flattened cars, stacked like so many magazines. Yet another captures a mess of cell phones, hundreds of clunky old-style Nokias and Motorolas that have been replaced by today's flip-phone models.

Most of these pictures were taken in Seattle and Tacoma, but the style is overwhelmingly Dusseldorf, recalling the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher, Thomas Struth and above all Andreas Gursky. Not only are Jordan's prints large, even by today's inflated standards, but they share Gursky's fascination with the effects of global commerce. And Jordan too has a soft spot for objects organized in rows and stacks, effectively turning the world into one big assembly line or shopping aisle.

To his credit, though, Jordan brings his own sensibility to the Dusseldorf fray--a kind of homely, post-industrial Romanticism. He finds beauty not in shiny new cars or Prada stores but in the shredded steel and broken glass littering the country. His desolate recycling piles often take the shape of mountains, lending a sense of sublime to the detritus of everyday life, while his more painterly fieldlike compositions read like forgotten landscapes. Especially powerful is Glass, Seattle from 2004. The panoramic view of broken glass--heavy on green and yellow shards--blooms with color like a chaotic flower garden.

The other thing that distinguishes Jordan from the pack is that he does his own printing. After shooting with an 8-by-10 view camera, he scans the film into Photoshop and prints it himself on an Epson 9600 using archival inks. Photographers who send film out to studios may still retain a good deal of control over the final product, but Jordan's images, beautifully detailed, have an integrity and authority that smack of a single vision from start to finish. Rarely has trash been handled with such care---perhaps even receiving enough attention to transcend its lowly cultural status. [On view at Yossi Milo Gallery, New York, Sept. 8- Oct. 15.]

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