Lauren Greenfield’s Generation Wealth project, from which Influence of Affluence stems, chronicles a progressive distortion of the American Dream in the 21st century and questions its sustainability. By organizing 25 years of work into one complex narrative, Greenfield also seeks to better understand the system that ties together so many of our largest commercial industries—among them fashion, entertainment, real estate, and banking—together, and how their standards shape our behavior.

Influence of Affluence is a companion piece to GENERATION WEALTH by Lauren Greenfield, currently on view in the main galleries at the ICP Museum, which features all new images not included in the show.

During the day, Influence of Affluence can be viewed on monitors inside the ICP Museum and during evening hours, images are literally “projected” onto the windows of the ICP Museum; they can be viewed from the sidewalk outside the Museum and are most visible after sunset.

About the Artist

Lauren Greenfield was born in 1966 in Boston, Massachusetts and raised in Los Angeles; she earned her BA in visual and environmental studies from Harvard University in 1987. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including ELLE, The Guardian, Harper’s Bazaar, Le Monde, Marie Claire, National Geographic, New York Magazine, the New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker, and Vanity Fair. She is the director of four full-length documentary films, including the Emmy-nominated Thin (2006) and the award-winning Queen of Versailles (2012), and five documentary shorts. Greenfield’s latest feature-length documentary, Wealth: The Influence of Affluence, will be released in the fall of 2017.