“Generation
Wealth” is a multi-platform project that Lauren Greenfield has been working on
since 2008, and is being released in 2017 as a museum exhibition, a
photographic monograph, and a documentary film. Lauren Greenfield’s “Generation
Wealth” is an extraordinary visual history of our growing obsession with
wealth.
Through
riveting first-person interviews, Greenfield’s journey starts in Los Angeles
and spreads across America and beyond,
as she documents how we export the values of materialism, celebrity culture,
and social status to every corner of the globe. We embark on this journey with
Greenfield as she travels the world – from Los Angeles to Moscow, Dubai to
China – bearing witness to the global
boom-and–bust economy and documenting its complicated consequences.
We
hear the stories of students, single parents, and families overwhelmed by
crushing debt, yet determined to purchase luxury houses, cars, and clothing. We
visit the homes and observe the rituals of the international elite—from Bel-Air
to Monaco, Russia to China. We gain intimate access into the lives of those
that rose to extraordinary wealth and then lost “big” during the global
economic crash of 2008. And we encounter the A-list celebrities we follow on
reality TV and social media, the same influencers who shape our consumer
desires and sense of self.
Provoking
serious reflection, “Generation Wealth” is not about the rich, but about the
desire to be wealthy, at any cost.
You’ve
said that Generation Wealth is not about the rich, but about the influence of
affluence. Can you tell us more about what that means?
LG : It’s
really about the aspiration to wealth and how this has become part of the
American Dream, as well as how that dream and those values have also been
exported internationally. I say it’s not about wealth for two reasons. One is,
a lot of people in the book are not actually wealthy. The project is very
diverse and that’s kind of the point – to see how these similar behaviors and
influences are affecting everyone, from children to old people, from LA to New
York, from Iceland to Ireland to Dubai to Russia to China. And secondly, it’s
really about the addictive quality of consumerism, which is a kind of striving
that happens at any level.
What
was the most significant change that you observed over these 25 years of work?
LG : One
of the things that happened over this time was that people started having a
vertical reference group rather than a horizontal reference group. So, people
used to compare themselves to their neighbors, and that was kind of the root of
“keeping up with the Joneses,” the notion of comparing yourself to the neighbor
that had a little bit more than you did. Then we started spending more time
with the media and with people on TV than with our neighbors, and actually
feeling like we knew those people better than our neighbors, so “keeping up
with the Joneses” literally becomes “keeping up with the Kardashians” in the
age of reality TV.
The
effect of seeing affluent lifestyles on television has been proven to a) make
people think more people have that kind of lifestyle than really do, so it’s a
distorted view of what’s normal but b) it also stimulates desire for those
things. Mix that with the ability to get credit without regard to your ability
to pay it back, and you have a situation where people are living out these
fantasies.
But,
back to your first question, the rich are also in Generation Wealth and they’re
important because they have a disproportionate influence, but the meat of the
book is the fact that this is what we all want. It’s not limited to the 1%
which is this very small group. In America, people don’t resent the rich
because they always imagine that it will be them someday. It’s about
aspiration.
Your
book does serve to de-glamorize the rich and pursuit of riches, and yet, we’re
all still hypnotized by looking at your images. Does that say something about
the extent of our fixation?
LG : I
like using laughter as a way in for storytelling. I like the surprise or the
unexpected journey of thinking it’s going to be one thing and then realizing
it’s another. For example, the viral spot I made #likeagirl. It starts out with
laughing, as the way people imitate girls running or girls fighting, and it’s
kind of funny, because it also feels low stakes, like, what does it really
matter? But then as the spot progresses, you start off laughing and end up
crying and I think it allows you to get in and engage, and also want to take
the time to have the experience. Then, you see it for what it is, and that has
another effect.
With
Generation Wealth, the book is bound in gold silk, so it’s like this beautiful,
luxurious object that you want to have, which is ironic. I’ve always kind of
worked that way, and I like black humor. I’ve worked with very bright,
saturated colors and used the language of the popular culture – whether that
was sexy bodies or bright lights or provocative, dynamic pictures – to bring
the viewer into the story.
But
part of the reason why I also include the interviews in the book is because
sometimes the text belie the images. For example, Mijanou, who’s the girl on
the cover of Fast Forward. She’s this beautiful girl, there are all these
convertibles at the beach and, especially for Europeans, it’s kind of like the
Californian dream. But then when you read her interview, you see that she’s
struggling to keep up in that world because she doesn’t have the money that the
other kids do, and she actually uses beauty in a way as currency to get into
that popular crowd, and that has a kind of traumatic effect.
So, I
think it’s good that people are drawn and repulsed by the images, and I hope
that inspires the same examination of our own attractions to things. Like when
I go into a store, I’ll be attracted to the posters or the packaging or the
bags – those things are made to have that effect. What I’m trying to do is to
also have the ability to see that, and deconstruct what’s around us and the
effect that’s having on us… But of course that doesn’t take away that effect.
The
Influence of affluence : an interview
with Lauren Greenfield. By Katherine Oktober Matthews. Gup Magazine, March 15, 2017.
On
the book : The Photographer Behind an
Unflinching Study of Wealth. By Gemma Padley. Another Magazine , May 22, 2017
This
is one of several documentaries at the festival trying to deal with this new
moment that we’re in with regards to Internet/Instagram celebrity and the
societal shift away from hard work toward this anxiety and “hard work” about
projecting the right image. Your practice isn’t exactly Marxist, but how would
you describe that you’re looking at this ,
L G :
Well, I want to see what movies you’re talking about. I did see Eighth Grade,
which I loved. I think this work is very critical of capitalism. I studied
economics and sociology and anthropology, and some of my perspective on this
comes from that, but it’s a little bit more of seeing over the last 25 years
how our form of capitalism has become an addictive quality of consumerism,
which I guess Marx did sort of predict in the continual expansion. I’ve looked
at it from a more psychological perspective, comparing it to addiction and
addiction being something that comes from trying to numb pain. So I think at
the heart of it we’ve lost sight of our values and, in a way, our connections
to other people. Our families, our communities, what matters. I’m not really
prescribing anything else. I don’t know what the answer is, except that I do
think we need to wake to the forces affecting us, which we’re not always
conscious of.
I
feel like so much of it is this begrudging acceptance: “I hate Facebook, but
I’m on it anyway.” What you’re trying to do to with this film is think about it
critically and constructively and not just go along with it. Because it is tied
to a large, career-spanning retrospective and book also titled Generation
Wealth, at what point did you decide to insert yourself and your family into the
film Generation Wealth?
LG : I
started with the project of the book. When the crash happened, it become a
morality tale about the way we had been living and seemed like the consequences
were the natural result that we were going to learn from. Then we didn’t really
learn from it. So, I started going back through my work and feeling like I
needed to process it in a different way. When The Queen of Versailles was
finished in 2012, I threw myself into that full time and started the process of
going back through my work and also making new work to tell the story of
“generation wealth,” and how we have changed. When I went back, I realized at
the time I had worked and the subjects I had covered were not just my own
personal trajectory but were tied to these seismic shifts in our culture, which
I’d been there to document without fully knowing what they meant. I felt like I
needed to put this journey in a historical context and bring it all together.
At
the same time, I was the connective thread because I was hopping from eating
disorders to Russian society to new wealth in China; if you just looked at all
these subjects you would not think they were connected. But I really felt like
there was a connection about where we had come to in this end-of-empire kind of
feeling, like the fall of Rome. It seemed like we were on an unsustainable
path. I started bringing it together as a narrator, but along the way the
personal started to become relevant. I think it’s because I want to be honest
and transparent about my own process as an artist, that I’m somebody that is
also in the culture and interacting with it in different ways.
I
would talk to someone like Florian Homm [an investment banker charged with $200
million in fraud] who would tell to me about how he destroyed the relationships
with his family by five hundred [business] phone calls a day. An extreme
example, much more extreme than my own, but I could relate. I was on four-week
trips away from my own family regularly, so it just started a process of me
looking at that as well. So it evolved in a way I didn’t want to include in the
beginning, and I just started seeing it as important to the storytelling.
What
do you think work means at this point in history? You bring up someone like
Florian Homm, who sometimes seems like he’s actually repentant and other times
it’s so obvious that if he could go back to that life by pressing a button, he
would do it.
LG : That’s
a really hard question because work really brings meaning to my life. I think
that’s what I learned from my parents: that work was a passion and was a
privilege. I think that to get to do work that you like is a huge privilege and
something that is a rarity. I think part of what makes work meaningful is
feeling like you’re making a difference and that was also really important to
my parents—doing something for the common good. I think what was so
soul-killing about Florian’s work is that it was predatory. Like he said, “I
made a lot of enemies.” I think work is really important, but I also show how
addiction to work has consequences and that addiction to anything always have
to do with numbing other pain. For me, work is also a feminist statement. I
feel like we still live in a world where a lot of women don’t work. I just got
an email about grad night at my son’s school and 100% of the committee members
were moms. For my mom, work was also a feminist act or statement. I think it’s
connected to voice. A lot of my work is looking at voice, female voice, or lack
of voice, and eating disorders. One of the most poignant points when I was
making Thin, there was a woman who said she didn’t feel like she knew how to
use her voice so she used her body instead and that when she saw her interview
in my book she realized she had a voice. I think, for me, my work has been a
voice, and that has been really empowering, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t
consequences, too.
There’s
this feeling now—most obviously when someone gets shamed online—that everyone
must abide by this ideological purity. You can’t exert your ideals perfectly at
every moment and still be a member of society.
LG : For
me, the key is men. Most men in careers travel and focus on their work and
compartmentalize and can still be great dads because of this unsung hero at
home. In my case, my husband has been really supportive of my work and not
letting my being a mother or a wife get in the way of helping me do it all. And
it’s not just my husband. It’s also my mom. It just takes a lot of other people
along the way. Even just the kind of introspection I went through in this film.
In terms of the consequences, I don’t think you would see a man do that. It’s
just normal life. Hopefully that part can start to become a little more
balanced.
Speaking
of context, out of anyone who could of spoken about the ideas in your work, why
did you choose Chris Hedges? He’s the only person in the film who isn’t one of
your previous photographic subjects.
LG : I
actually did interview a lot of economists and experts, but in the end I felt
that the film wanted to be more personal and character-driven. They all ended
up on the cutting-room floor, except Chris Hedges, whose work was so inspiring
to me and so tied into ideas I was trying to bring together but in a voice so
different from my own. When I read his book Empire of Illusion, it just really
brought together a lot of the ideas I was thinking about with pornography and
money and where American society was going and capitalism. I really loved what
he said about culture and authentic culture getting destroyed by capitalism,
but also authentic culture being the thing that gives us the capacity to
criticize ourselves. For me, that really spoke to what I was trying to do: make
critical work that allows us to deconstruct the culture that we’re in and see
the matrix that is affecting us every day.
At
the beginning of the ’90s, there was this idea of being at the end of history,
in this postmodern moment when we were going to surpass racism and sexism—even
though everyone had a reminder in November 2016 that we’re not even close. In
the film, it’s intimated that when our society falls, we’re going to take the
world with it. Do you really feel like that’s true, or is there a way in which
things can turn around?
LG : In Generation Wealth, we’re stuck with a
lot of stuff we inherit but we also have a lot of agency and the possibility
for change. Using the analogy of addiction, this idea of hitting rock-bottom,
the economic crisis, can also lead to insight and can also be moments that
create possibilities for change. We would not have #MeToo without Harvey
Weinstein, and maybe it takes Trump to really see ourselves. I included the
line from Trump’s campaign when he said, “This isn’t about me. This is about
you.” We elected him and we need to look at what that means about us and our
culture. I think the values of corporate capitalism are a part of that. I think
social media and the Internet are a part of that. I think this individualism
and us living in silos is a part of that, and I think there’s this intense
loneliness. This lack of connection and losing sight of what really matters is
a part of it. I do have a lot of hope because of the characters and their
insights. But that hope is on one side and on the other side is that feeling
that we’ve been on this course for a long time; if unchanged, I think that will
take us to a terrible place.
Follow the Money
(Then Take a Picture). By Kurt Soller. New York Times , August 2018.
A profile of Lauren Greenfield
To
call any of Ms. Greenfield’s portrayals flattering would be inaccurate. (Ms.
Siegel’s husband sued the director for defamation after the “The Queen of
Versailles” was released, but the director won $750,000 in legal fees after an
arbitrator ruled that everything in the film was true.) And she seems to have a
knack for convincing people to be radically, unappealingly honest. Her subjects
must find that cathartic. Many have agreed to sit with her repeatedly over the
years, including for “Generation Wealth,” and Ms. Greenfield has stayed close
with several of them, even those she’s captured in harsh light.
One
of them, a Las Vegas party host named Tiffany Masters, flew to New York to
attend the “Generation Wealth” premiere. Sipping an espresso martini at the
after-party, she described how Ms. Greenfield has caught her in various
unfavorable ways: in the act of pulling her skirt down, for example, or
recording a fatty “flap over the bra.” Nonetheless, Ms. Masters said, she
doesn’t fault the artist. “Lauren has the ability to shoot the truth,” she
said.
But
does Ms. Masters like those photos of herself?
Long
pause. “No.”
Why
not?
Another
long pause. “They’re unfiltered,” Ms. Masters said. “They’re raw. They’re
uncensored. But they’re human.”
--------------
Both
Mr. Evers and Ms. Greenfield were initially reluctant to include her story in
the film. “But Lauren realized that she herself was very much a part of this
wealth culture,” Mr. Evers said. “She wanted audiences to realize they were
complicit, too.” Ms. Greenfield became more comfortable with appearing in her
own work after trying it in a 2014 ad she created for the feminine-care brand
Always. The spot featured the director interviewing children about gender
stereotypes, showing how the phrase “like a girl” — as in “run like a girl” or “fight
like a girl” — transforms into an insult as kids age. The campaign has become
Ms. Greenfield’s most-watched product, after airing during the 2015 Super Bowl
and amassing more than 200 million views.
“Generation
Wealth,” which Ms. Greenfield has also turned into a traveling museum
exhibition, doubles as a retrospective and a farewell to her focus on still
photography. “Print is dying,” she said, and magazines are commissioning fewer
shoots, unable to finance the weeks of travel that her style of reportage
requires. In the future, she said, she will concentrate on documentaries. Her
next project is with Showtime; Ms. Greenfield would reveal only that it is set
in Asia.
Her
current film ends with a dose of unexpected brightness, returning to characters
who have forsaken their love of money for actual, human love. But ultimately,
the takeaway from Ms. Greenfield’s decades of work seems to be that it’s up to
future generations to decide how to spend their money — and if you ask her son
Noah for his take, the kids are not all right.
“That’s
what I realized from the film,” he said in an interview. “People are spending
like nobody cares, and that’s exactly how it was in 2008.”
The
exhibition is currently at the Fotomuseum Den Haag .
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