Lauren Greenfield Named “the foremost visual chronicler of the plutocracy” by the New York Times, acclaimed Emmy-winning documentary photographer/filmmaker Lauren Greenfield is also widely considered the preeminent chronicler of popular culture, gender and consumerism, as a result of her monographs “Fast Forward”, “Girl Culture”, “THIN”, “Generation Wealth” and other photographic works, which have been widely published, exhibited, and collected by museums around the world, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the J. Paul Getty Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), Smithsonian, the International Center of Photography, the Center for Creative Photography, and the Museum of Fine Arts (Houston).
In 2015, Greenfield directed the record-breaking Superbowl and viral spot “#LikeAGirl” (90+ million downloads and 12 billion impressions) which was voted by YouTube as the third best ad of the decade. Sweeping the advertising awards of 2015, Greenfield was named the #1 director and Most Awarded Director by AdAge, the first woman in commercial history to ever top this list, the spot won a 2015 Emmy, 14 Lions (including the Titanium Lion) at the Cannes Festival of Creativity, 7 Clios, 5 Art Directors, 8 pencils at the D & AD Awards, and the Best in Show at the AICP Awards, upon which it became part of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) collection. Additionally, ESPN has named her one of their Top 25 Impact Influencers of 2015 and the recently released sequel “Unstoppable Like a Girl” is one of the top 10 YouTube ads of 2015, having received 80 million impressions to date.
In January 2019, Greenfield founded Girl Culture Films, a new commercial production company dedicated to bringing A-list female directing talents to the worlds of advertisement and branded content. In addition, Girl Culture Films will develop and produce scripted and non-scripted projects for theatrical, broadcast, and streaming platforms.
Greenfield’s Generation Wealth film opened the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, screened at Berlinale, SXSW, and is now in wide global release by Amazon Studios. In January 2019, the Writers Guild of America nominated Generation Wealth for Best Documentary screenplay, and The Motion Picture Sound Editors guild nominated Generation Wealth for Best Sound Editing/Feature Documentary. Generation Wealth also garnered her The Paris Photography Prize (PX3) and the Photographer of the Year from the Art Directors Club. The companion exhibition has travelled around the world and will open at Deichtorhallen Hamburg in Spring 2019 and then the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Copenhagen) in Fall 2019. In September 2018, Greenfield was given the LA Film Festival Spirit of Independence Award.
Lauren’s last feature doc, “The Queen of Versailles”, was also the Opening Night film of Sundance 2012 where it won her the Best Director Award in the U.S. Documentary Competition. “The Queen of Versailles” went on to box office success and critical acclaim, including winning the Brisbane International Film Festival Prize, and nominations for Best Documentary by the Directors Guild, International Documentary Association, Critics Choice, and the London Critics Circle Film Awards. Lauren previously directed three award-winning documentary films – “THIN” (HBO), “kids + money” (HBO) and “Beauty CULTure” (Annenberg Space for Photography) that opened at Sundance and Tribeca Film Festivals.
Named one of the 2015 Top 10 directors in Adweek’s Most Creative 100 People and by American Photo as one of the 25 most influential photographers working today, Greenfield started her career as an intern for National Geographic after graduating from Harvard in 1987. Her photographs have regularly appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Time, GQ, and The Guardian, and have won many awards including the ICP Infinity Award, the Hasselblad Grant, the Community Awareness Award from the National Press Photographers, and the Moscow Biennial People’s Choice Award. She lectures at museums and universities around the world and serves on the Advisory Committee of Harvard University’s Office for the Arts.
