Lauren Greenfield: Generation Wealth

This book needs a stand for comfortable handling. That's fine with me. I can hardly imagine someone who loves and buys photo books who hasn't already tackled this issue.The author is not a wizard with a camera; there are no "compositions" that draw you in on the strength of visual organization. OTOH this book wouldn't work as a normal book from the normal photo nerd world, in which a photog makes intrinsically engaging images and an academic offers ideas on how to think about the images. I also wouldn't want the normal journalistic model, in which images merely illustrate the text.I admire this book so much - the coherence and *actual* importance of the subject of the author's career. Not "importance" as in "This important body of work marks the artist's return to the subject of dialectics of gender and universal humanity..." It doesn't feel like any other retrospective type project I can recall. Occasionally I was aware of gears turning in the segues to new sub-subjects. Still, nothing is force-fit at all.It's hard to imagine anyone who likes photography or reading - or anthropology, or behavioral economics, or just interesting stuff in general - who wouldn't enjoy this book. I really savored it, reading just a few pages at a time, coming back to it for a fresh jolt again and again. I actually recommend going through it this way.I watched all of Greenfield docs mentioned in the book. They are all good. Queen of Versailles was already one of my all-time faves. There is a website for the upcoming Generation Wealth doc, with great info supplementary/ancillary to this book. E.g. the bibliography is worth perusing if you find Generation Wealth interesting at all.I feel like I still haven't pinned down what I like so much about this book. IDK - I guess if you are a photo nerd like me, looking at these pictures thinking, hmm I'm not seeing exhibition quality here, give this book a chance. It really is a great achievement - a grand whole that is more than the sum of its parts.

Lauren Greenfield is an incredibly gifted photographer, and if she had only published a book of her photographs it would be well worth it. However, in this 500 page tome, we are treated not only to a 25 year record of her photographs capturing our fixation with material goods and wealth, but a series of interviews that Greenfield did with her subjects. Although the old saying is that a picture is worth 1000 words, and that is certainly true with the photographs of this book, Greenfield's interviews give context and background that enriches the story she wants to tell. We better understand the motivations and drivers for the acquisition of these costly goods.Over the last decade of the 20th century and into the first two decades of the 21st-century, we have become increasingly fixated on what we can buy, what we wear, and how we can show off to our peers. This is not a good thing. Greenfield shows how this new materialism is destructive across social classes, and even across national boundaries, as the nouveau rich of formerly communist countries of Russia and China have adopted the conspicuous consumption of the West.Whether it is teenagers in LA competing for the best bar mitzvah, or poor students saving up hard earned money to splurge on proms, cosmetic surgery to achieve an idealized body image or buying the fanciest hand bags, Greenfield shows that these shallow fixations are not good for her subjects or our society in general.

Lauren Greenfield has published a coffee table book compilation of her photograph and video work done since the late 1980's. She has followed the idea of wealth - who has it, who wants it, who earns it, who inherits it - for the past 30 or so years. Her work has been displayed in museums and art galleries and on film. Perhaps her most famous piece is a movie called "The Queen of Versailles", a grotesque but strangely charming look at a couple who is building their "dream home" in Florida. The husband and his trophy-wife have about eleventy-seven children, all cared for by their own nannies, while the mother shops maniacally, and the father hides in his study, doing business. The documentary is viewable on Amazon, and Greenfield includes stills from the movie.But Greenfield looks at many other groups of the already-wealthy, as well as those who seek wealth. Does wealth confer class? Sometimes, if the definition of "class" is a "grill" of diamonds in a person's mouth, it does. Lauren Greenfield is fairly quiet on the definition of "wealth" and the ramifications of the acquisition and holding of wealth. Many of the people in her pictures look a bit sad - or is that my projection? I don't know and Greenfield doesn't follow up on many of the people in the photographs. That's okay, wealth - like fame - is often fleeting...By the way, this is a very, VERY large book.

love the book and the photos. Classic coffee table keeper.

Greenfield's photographs capture in a memorable way what the accompanying words support. With sympathetic eyes, she portrays those of us who are populating worlds of excess and misery that must be seen to be appreciated. If you are among those who live like lifestyles, of being 'seen' and 'admired' or being 'seen' and 'shunned', you too, will find Greenfield's analysis of craving a fascinating study.

I first come across Lauren's docu-film on Generation Wealth and realising that there is an accompanying book on this, I immediately grab this book. I like the photographs captured through the decades. It captures different parts of the world undergoing the economic bubble and then the melt-down in the 2000s. What is meant by "old money" and "new money". Narratives are provided by the subjects of these photographs. This book does make you think what truly is wealth and its accompanying pitfalls and benefits.

A superb piece of work by a photographer with a long term vision of her work, the work she produces says so much about contemporary society. Documentary photography can often fall into cliches of relentless images of poverty. Greenfield wisely looks at what the opposite of poverty is and what so many spend their time trying to achieve or aspire to; wealth. In combination with the documentary she dissects the damage that the last 25 years or so has done.

Book is amazing and even better as a “partner” to the film. Amazon unfortunately don’t really give a s**** and the book was not packaged properly, ripped open on arrival with damage to the cover. I really couldn’t be bothered to return it, and wanted to start enjoying the content straight away. My copy looks second hand already and I’ve had it 5 minutes. Sort it out Amazon, try harder.

Love love love this book, it’s huge, it’s riveting and thought provoking

Beautiful coffee table book - one you’ll actually read!

Bought it to remind me the superb documentary I saw on prime.