The binding of Lauren Greenfield’s new book of photography, “Generation Wealth,” has the color and sheen of a bar of yellow gold. The book has the heft of bullion, too: at seven pounds, it is too heavy to hold in a single hand, and too weighty to read unless rested on a lap or table. The size is demanded by the scope of the work. It consists of five hundred glossy pages of Greenfield’s photographs from the last quarter century, along with accompanying text. The images range from portraits of high-school students and gangbangers in Los Angeles, in the early nineteen-nineties, to photos of plastic-surgery aficionados undergoing their painful rites in the mid-two-thousands to pictures of high rollers at Las Vegas casinos “making it rain,” tossing stacks of dollar bills like confetti to the glee of those around them. But the book’s design also seems intended to be ironic commentary on the culture, or subcultures, it seeks to portray: materialistic, vulgar, excessive, and wasteful. The book would fit perfectly into the pseudo-rococo decorating scheme of the penthouse apartment at Trump Tower.
What Rampant Materialism Looks Like, and What It Costs | The New Yorker