Lauren Greenfield at the Design Museum, London with Anne McElvoy, left

Lauren Greenfield - 'I want to photograph Trump!'

Our Generation Wealth photo author made a surprise revelation at last night’s Design Museum talk. . .

In her live interview with the Economist's Anne McElvoy last night at the Design Museum in London, Generation Wealth photographer Lauren Greenfield proved she was as engaging a talker as she is a photographer.

In a wide ranging chat that encompassed the difference between old and new money, the ever mutating pursuit of the American Dream, how the expression of success has changed dramatically in our lifetime and why Brits incorrectly assume they're above it all, Greenfield also revealed her attempts to shoot US president Donald Trump for her Generation Wealth project.

Lauren Greenfield at The Design Museum

To much laughter from the audience the photographer answered a question from the floor about shooting Trump, by saying: "Yeah, that was kind of my dream! I was trying to organise it with NBC before he was running for president and then once he ran for President they cancelled the show (The Apprentice).

Lauren Greenfield signs a copy of Generation Wealth for a fan after her talk

"I didn’t know he was gonna become president but looking back I guess it seems like the writing was on the wall. I have approached him through a few different publications but he hasn’t agreed. But I’m still here if he wants me!"

Lauren Greenfield towered over by a young Kim Kardashian

Earlier in the talk Greenfield talked a little more about her reasoning, and even revealed that Trump was installing gold drapes in the White House. “I was so interested in his aesthetic - his love for gold, he lives in this luxury penthouse with 24 karat gold walls," she said. "He owns beauty pageants similar to David Siegel (the US businessman who was the co-subject of Greenfield's film The Queen of Versailles) and works in the commodification of women. I'm also interested in how these beautiful women around him are like expressions of his success. So in a way, Donald Trump embodies the themes in Generation Wealth.”

Greenfield was mildly optimistic about the eventual outcome of the Trump presidency however, saying: "I don’t know what this will bring, but I do think in moments of crisis there’s an opportunity for change and insight."

Lauren Greenfield at The Design Museum

That's one picture we'd all like to see develop. We'll be posting a video from the talk later today. For now though, check out Lauren's book Generation Wealth here.

Lauren Greenfield: Generation Wealth : Lauren Greenfield, with a foreword by Juliet Schor

Price AUD$110.00 Price CAD$95.00 Price €69.95 Price £59.95 Price T75.00 Price USD$75.00

A highly anticipated monograph from the internationally acclaimed documentary photographer and filmmaker

Lauren Greenfield: Generation Wealth is both a retrospective and an investigation into the subject of wealth over the last twenty-five years. Greenfield has traveled the world - from Los Angeles to Moscow, Dubai to China - bearing witness to the global boom-and-bust economy and documenting its complicated consequences. Provoking serious reflection, this book is not about the rich, but about the desire to be wealthy, at any cost.

Specifications:

Format: Hardback
Size: 305 × 229 mm (12 × 9 in)
Pages: 504 pp
Illustrations: 625 illustrations
ISBN: 9780714872124

Lauren Greenfield is an Emmy-award-winning photographer and filmmaker. A preeminent chronicler of youth culture, gender, and consumerism, her documentary The Queen of Versailles won the Best Documentary Director Award at Sundance in 2012. Her photographs have been widely published, exhibited - and collected - and her Super Bowl commercial, Like a Girl, went viral and swept the advertising awards of 2015.

Juliet Schor is an author, economist, cultural critic, and professor of sociology at Boston College. Her research focuses on the economics of work, spending, the environment, and consumer culture.

Trudy Wilner Stack was Curator of Exhibitions & Collections at the Center for Creative Photography, the University of Arizona for over a decade, after holding positions at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the International Center of Photography, and the Birmingham Museum of Art. She has curated dozens of exhibitions of contemporary and historical photography around the world, and is a frequent contributing author and lecturer.

Lucie Award for "Best Book Photographer of the Year", 2017

"Expertly crafted visually... Generation Wealth enthralls from the start."—Hollywood News

"An insightful and scathing look at society's obsession with excess."—Screen International

"Greenfield is on to something in this unexpectedly personal documentary of the same name - she makes a compelling argument for a society on the brink of precipitous decline."—Variety

"Generation Wealth (the film) succeeds in its whiplash, globe-spanning look at the roller-coaster of soul-devouring narcissism and wealth, and it also finds depth in Greenfield's self-examination. Maybe for it to stick any of its thematic or ideological landings, I'd have to buy the book."—Hollywood Reporter

"For nearly three decades, Greenfield has been meticulously documenting wealth [her] ongoing examination of wealth feels more urgent than ever." —Artsy

"Generation Wealth is a comprehensive study of excess and evolution. Revolting and revelatory, sobering and stunning. Lauren Greenfield is the Doris Kearns Goodwin of the visual medium."—Jamie Lee Curtis

"Lauren Greenfield's photographs range from hilarious to terrifying, sometimes in the same image. The images are unjudgemental - dystopian shock and awe somewhere at the end of Empire - and yet moving: she makes it personal. It could have been me."—Brian Eno

"Greenfield is a prodigious talent, and this book is a masterpiece. If I had the privilege of putting together the time capsule left underground for future generations, I am certain that Generation Wealth would be in the box."—Juliet Schor

"Generation Wealth takes us down the yellow brick road where we are able to see who we, as a collective, are becoming. Like Studs Terkel with a camera, Greenfield's lens allows us to watch the transmogrification of the American Dream of success through hard work, modesty and discipline turn into a nightmare of conspicuous wealth, excess and addiction... Whether the photographs are humorous, heart-wrenching or both we never feel judgement, just observation and that observation gives us room to know we are all complicit in varying degrees."—Jennifer Beals

"A staggering indictment of materialism."—Smithsonian

"[Greenfield] treats her subjects as individuals, but her work derives its greatest power from its ability to succinctly and enthrallingly chart a larger national story. All that glitters is not gold."—Brooklyn Rail

"With a golden cover and 650-odd images inside, [Generation Wealth] is a sociological record of the extreme measures taken to acquire and spend money, what Greenfield calls "the influence of affluence."—The New York Times

"[A]n anthropological deep-dive into the way the very idea of wealth has infected the human psyche globally."—Los Angeles Times

"It is an artist's special privilege to gain access to the world of the rich - and one of her noblest callings is to show the rest of us what that looks like, how money functions, how the system works. It's hard to think of anyone who does it with as much diligence as Greenfield."—The Times Magazine

"Generation Wealth, the forthcoming coffee-table book by brilliant photographer Lauren Greenfield... A tragicomic catalogue of material excess across the globe."—The Times