Lauren Greenfield '83

ARTIST STATEMENT

Generation Wealth brings to fruition a career spent documenting what I call “the influence of affluence.” Over the past 25 years, I have explored the rise of consumerism and ways in which late-stage capitalism is destructive to our identities, our communities, our economy, our families, our environment and our souls. The concept of this project began to come together after the 2008 financial crisis, when I realized that all the stories I had documented were part of a larger narrative—a morality tale in which we were all implicated.

While I call this work Generation Wealth, it isn’t simply about the wealthy. It’s about our increasing aspiration for wealth. The American Dream once meant that through hard work, each of us had an opportunity to achieve a comfortable standard of living. Now that dream has metastasized into unattainable fantasy. Keeping up with the Joneses has become Keeping up with the Kardashians. In this work, I have examined the shift away from traditional virtues—modesty, thrift, social responsibility—toward a culture that admires bling and self-indulgence.

The wealth we are obsessively seeking is not just money, but everything that gives us status, including fame, beauty and youth. I have documented this striving among the poor in a culture that worships wealth, among the aging in a society that idolizes youth, even among the people of Russia and China, who now also seek status achieved through luxury brands, rejecting the communist ideology that attempted to erase class distinctions. It seems not surprising, at this point in time, that Donald Trump—a flashy reality-TV star and real-estate developer who may be the apotheosis of Generation Wealth—was elected leader of the free world.

On this journey, I have sometimes felt I am witnessing the decline of Western civilization, but the project offers hope that, by highlighting the futility of the path we have been taking, we will be better able to change direction. This hope is expressed in the lessons many of the subjects of the photographs have learned. Even time-share mogul David Siegel, who tried to build the biggest house in America, admits at the end of my film The Queen of Versailles that he regretted pursuing his grand ambitions through frantic borrowing, calling it “a vicious cycle.” Implicating himself and us, he adds, “No one is without guilt.”

The idea that we are all complicit in an unsustainable arms race toward “more” drove me to include myself, my family, and my photographic journey in the companion film, Generation Wealth. In investigating how we all play a part—and my own conflicting feelings about affluence and the desire for more—the project becomes a call to action that urges us to seek an alternative. The film articulates this hope explicitly, as the subjects reject the emptiness of material excess and consciously choose a more fulfilling path for themselves and their children.