Lauren Greenfieldâs Generation Wealth at the International Center for Photography (ICP) is, first and foremost, largely a condensation of Greenfieldâs work as an artist and visual anthropologist in the last 25 years documenting the âinfluence of affluenceâ in America. That Generation Wealth first showed at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles (the artistâs hometown and the subject of her first projects) is fitting, given the shadows of Hollywood and Porn Valley over the city of Los Angeles; that the exhibition has now moved over to New York City â the financial hub of America and base of President Donald Trumpâs business empire â is also hardly surprising. However the artist is interested not in wealth per se as the exhibitionâs title might suggest, but rather in what people associate wealth with, what they are willing to do for it, and the haunting spectre of the (aspirational) American Dream. The work of Greenfield over the last 25 years thus offers a timely survey of a consumerist culture over interesting period-markers since the 1990s: the official end of the Cold War and the triumph of global capitalism; the emergence of the internet as the dominant infrastructure of our cultural consumption and production, the financial crisis in 2008, the rise of China as a major economic force contra to America, and the recent inauguration of a celebrity and businessman as the leader of America.
(Image by Lauren Greenfield)
As the headlining exhibition for Fall at the ICP, it is hardly surprising that even before I entered the building I was immediately greeted with a large image by the artist: A young mother wearing a sweater that reads âIâM A LUXURYâ looking at her nonplussed daughter riding a toy pony across the room of what seems to be an affluent home. The angle of the image is tilted, adding considerable tension to what seems to be a well-groomed but nonetheless bland-looking apartment; but this angled approach also creates an intimate sense of informality, as if the artist had taken this image of mother and child on the fly. But what is even more interesting about this lack of a formal (i.e. straight, geometric) composition is the suggestion that perhaps in this age of social media and other platforms for image-sharing over the internet, the wealthy no longer need a professional photographer to document their wealth or share their sense of conspicuous consumption; they already do it for themselves (and perhaps do so with a reach that far extends even what an exhibition at the ICP can do). This is a fittingly powerful image that prefaces the exhibition of Lauren Greenfieldâs work, asking questions in advance of an artist documenting the well-documented, and what different functions might her images perform â beyond that of visibility.
Going past the prefacing image, I had to walk past the gift shop and the cafe, resisting the urge to purchase a book, a postcard or a drink, before purchasing tickets to the exhibition proper. All the while wondering: does the presence of Greenfieldâs image at the door implicate the venue of ICP as well, doubling as the artistâs critique of museums, galleries and their transparent architectures as highly visible spaces for conspicuous consumption. A quick flash of the student card, ten dollars, and a ticket stub later, I entered the exhibition proper. I came face to face to a long free-standing wall sitting in the middle of a white cube. It is plastered all over with a golden monochromatic vinyl as background, all 6 yards of it, with the exhibitionâs introductory wall-text in black. The design of this introductory wall panel is minimalist, clean and elegant, highly reminiscent of the aesthetics of luxury brands. (Less is more, I guess.) Against a uniform architecture of four white walls, the golden introductory wall that greets one at the entrance does a rather decent job of adding some tension to the otherwise uninspiring architecture.
A quick glance around, and I could tell that the entire space is cramped with images, texts and videos. Arranged across in a grid-like manner and with a common baseline for hanging throughout the entire space, the images, texts and videos are ordered into five sections: âCult of Celebrity,â âNew Aging,â âSexual Capital,â âThe Princess Brand,â âFast Forward / I Shop Therefore I am.â Most of the images presented are shot in landscape format. But whether landscape or portrait in orientation, the bulk of the images exhibited are approximately 40cm by 60cm in size, while larger prints or videos are used to bracket and frame the smaller images of each section. Texts containing quotations or interviews with her documented subjects are also selectively reproduced to add further contextualizations and depth to some of the images and their represented personalities. Overall, the sense of the space is such that there is a neutrality and objectivity in the experience of the exhibition space, largely due to the use of a white-cube architecture and that of gridded layout of the artistâs work.
On the particular section on celebrity culture, a wall-text notes Greenfieldâs reflexive consideration of photographyâs complicity: âCelebrities are themselves a commodity to buy and emulate ⊠Photography plays a major role in the commodification of the famous, as the process hinges on image. From art-directed film sets to carefully composed selfies, personal brands are created on camera.â Thus, while the exhibition is laid out in a very formal and equalizing grid, thereby projecting an image of objectivity, the artist seems also to be invested in breaking this impression by quietly inserting critical reflections on the photographic medium. Though it needs to be said that such a moment of self-reflexivity from the artist about her medium remains the only one throughout the exhibition space.
Style-wise regarding the artistâs images, most of Greenfieldâs images are wide shots, with a rare few close-ups which the artist then blows up for greater impact. It is hardly surprising that wide shots are favored, as they allow the artist to include as much environmental and contextual information without losing focus on the entire length of her human subjects. And as mentioned earlier, a good number of them are shot at a downward angle which indicates that the artist shot them at her eye level, simulating a sense of intimacy as if these images were taken on the fly of the moment. What I found interesting about this projected sense of intimacy isnât so much the presumed aesthetics of documentary immediacy, but rather the secondary effect that these images (not people) of wealth and aspirations are already intimate and familiar to most of us. In other words, Greenfield seems not to be interested solely in the personal stories of the people she photographed, but also in seeing them as a spectacle, in Guy Debordâs sense of the term, as a social relationship between people mediated by images.
(Image by Lauren Greenfield)
Another noteworthy image featured in the exhibition is that of the huge portrait of child beauty-queen Eden Wood. The image stands out formally for its size, its portrait orientation, and its close-up of the child star. Measuring somewhere between 2.5m in height and 1.5m in length, the image is blown up to reveal intricate details of Woodâs profile up close. Through the details, I got to notice the sheer amount of make-up worn by the child star, the intricate curls done to her hair, the opulence of the accessories worn by her. The image captured Wood playfully posing for the camera, with her tongue sticking out by her teeth. But I am hard-pressed to find in the image any sort of the stereotypical child-like innocence we associate with images of children. Instead, with the make-up for Wood done up to present her almost as an adult, the pose offered by Wood can quickly turn into an uncanny proposition for fellatio. This was the disturbing strength of the image offered by Greenfield, one that had the power also to turn the name of the child star âEden Woodâ into a somewhat ironic one.
Yet another powerful close-up portrait offered by Greenfield is the image of Marla Hanson, made perhaps more resonant due to Marla being a resident of New York. I was attracted to the image due to its seemingly innocuous nature: just a simple close-up portrait of a well-groomed middle-aged woman looking into the camera. In fact, this image wasnât even, as was with the image of Eden Wood, presented huge; it merely sits within a row of smaller landscape images. The only reason why it would have stood out in the row is that it is a close-up rather than a wide or mid shot. However, the caption reveals a horror story that disturbs the apparent silence of the image. Hanson was a former model who was initially sexually harassed by her landlord; in 1986, after several rejections by Hanson, her landlord paid others to attack her face with a razor. Hanson survived the incident but had over 700 stitches to her face. In that moment, moving between image and text, and back to image again, the innocuous silence of Marla Hansonâs portrait returns to us with an uncanny reminder that many victims of sexual harassment and sexual violence remain invisible because such visibility can often lead to embarrassment and further stigmatization. At first an image that seems easy to bypass (in a room chocked full of graphic images documenting extravagant wealth and highly sexualized bodies), the âsilentâ portrait of Marla Hanson speaks volume. Â
Although much of Greenfieldâs work has been a long arduous documentation of Americaâs aspirational consumer culture, the exhibition Generation Wealth did feature a few images outside of America: namely, that of China, Russia, and Iceland; the former pair interests the artists for their transitions into capitalism from their earlier systems of communism, and the latter for the aftermath of its nationwide bankruptcy. In her section on Chinaâs spectacular acceleration into capitalism, the artist explains that â[t]oday the richest Chinese emulate the West, where they travel and shop lavishly, educate their children, and invest in property beyond the reach of their government.â One of the most striking images in this section is that of the Chateau Zhang Laffitte hotel in Beijing built by the Chinese real-estate developer Zhang Yuchen as a facsimile of the historic Chateau Maison-Laffitte in France. The image of Zhangâs copy by Greenfield is interesting for its fairly innocuous wide shot of the setting. There are no human figures in the image, and therefore no indication of place beyond the features of the buildingâs architecture. Had there been no captions, the image would have passed off as documentation of a European setting. This deliberate strategy by Greenfield to include as little contextual or geographical information in the frame thus strengthens the idea that there are few icons of wealth and affluence with as much purchase as European heritage, and the decision by Zhang to buy and build a copy of that heritage is hardly surprising.
I thoroughly enjoyed Generation Wealth and I have tremendous respect for the rigor and the âshort-circuitingâ of art and visual anthropology in Lauren Greenfieldâs work. But while I exited the exhibition, re-encountering the image of the young wealthy mother with her âIâM A LUXURYâ sweater, I canât help but wonder if the artist could have added an index of images taken by the aspirational class of themselves and shared all over their social media profiles  Â
