Award Winning Photographer, Lauren Greenfield, has for the best part of 25 years pointed her camera to the richest people on the planet. She has interviewed and documented some of the wealthiest people alive. Lauren began photography when she finished college. After completing her studies at Harvard, she went back home in California where it all began. Lauren is also a filmmaker and she noted that as she started with her photography back in the 90s, she wasn’t really aware that she was to capture rampant materialism and what she called in her new book “a period of obsession with wealth”. Well, it’s been nearly three decades now since she started and during that time, Lauren’s work has spread its wings globally.
She has captured mega mansions, and at one time she examined a 24 karat solid gold toilet and if you think that was crazy, Lauren was also a witness of extravagant bottle services at nightclubs as well as getting a firsthand look at America’s obsession with plastic surgery. These are just some of the strange things she captured but for someone who has done this for nearly three decades, you can bet that there has been a lot more. However, Lauren Greenfield learned a lot during her work.
In the introduction of her new book, she wrote that one thing she learned from the people she was photographing was that the search for wealth will never end and no matter how much wealth people acquire, they are still not satisfied. Greenfield also went on to cite Wall Street’s trader, Sam Polk, who once said that the chase for wealth is an addiction just like any other.
But what are some of the craziest moments she captured? Well, we have created a small list here just to give you a picture of what it means to be extremely rich and wealthy.
Xue Qiwen
The photo below of Xue Qiwen is captured inside her Shanghai apartment and as you can see, almost every inch of furniture here is from Versace. The photo was captured back in 2005. Xue founded a company back in 1994 that deals in industrial cables and even though she is only 43 today, she is very wealthy. Just to give a hint of her wealth, she belongs to three golf clubs and she paid almost $100,000 to join each.
Christina En Route to Her Wedding
Another photo captured by Greenfield was of this 21-year-old Walmart pharmacist en route to her wedding. She was inside a Cinderella glass coach with a bewigged coachman in the Orlando Walt Disney World in Florida. Talk about a fairytale wedding, she was very nearly royalty herself, being an heir to the Walmart fortune.
Random VIP Guest
This one was a bit random but it was still a strangely photogenic opportunity. Greenfield captured a VIP guest in Las Vegas making it rain with $100 bills in a sold out Saturday nightclub. This was back in 2012.
These are some of the few extravagant moments Lauren Greenfield captured as she did her photography targeting the rich and wealthy. But just a few snapshots don’t quite do her work justice. Her book has more of these photos and it’s worth checking it out, as well as her Twitter page.
