Every day, we are faced with the pressure to strive for more: more money, a bigger house, better looks. From social media to our favorite TV shows—even billboards on the 405 Freeway—this pressure is hard to avoid. A new exhibition at the Annenberg Space for Photography titled “Generation Wealth” by filmmaker and photographer Lauren Greenfield takes a look at this cultural obsession with affluence.
The exhibition includes nearly 200 prints and 42 video interviews done by Greenfield over the past 25 years, starting with selections from her first-ever project: a photo exhibition about Hollywood values influencing everyday people called “Fast Forward: Growing Up in the Shadow of Hollywood.” “I realized in 2008, during the financial crash, that the hundreds of stories I had been working on since the early ’90s were connected to a bigger story,” says Greenfield.
She’s calling the Annenberg exhibit a “thematic retrospective,” as it contains work from some of her past projects, including “Fast Forward” and her documentaries kids + money and The Queen of Versailles, as well as new subjects shot specifically for this exhibit. She has photographed in Russia, China, Iceland and Ireland and filmed Wall Street figures and red-collar criminals.
The exhibit isn’t so much about people who are wealthy as it is about the desire for wealth. “Now people spend more time with their televisions than they do their neighbors,” says Greenfield. “So keeping up with the Joneses has become Keeping Up with the Kardashians in terms of what we compare ourselves to and what we aspire to.”
For The Queen of Versailles, Greenfield followed the family of David Siegel, owner of Westgate Resorts, as they were upgrading from a 26,000-square-foot house to one three times that size. When they were hit by the 2008 financial crash and lost nearly everything, Greenfield was there to capture Siegel’s economic downfall.
“In the end, he and a lot of the other characters [in the exhibition] come back to the simple conclusion that it’s really the core values that matter: friends, family and love,” says Greenfield. That is the lesson she’s learned herself, and it’s what she’s hoping will encourage discussion among those who come to see the show.
“I hope it provokes thought. I hope it provides a little perspective into where we are in our culture and makes people think about value and values.”
“Generation Wealth” is at Annenberg Space for Photography through Aug 13 (annenbergphotospace.org). Free.