Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Lauren Greenfield examines "Beauty Culture"

Lauren Greenfield's Girl Culture
More great news for Chelsea director Lauren Greenfield, who earlier this month was honored by the Art Directors Club and the Webby's: her photography and a short documentary film are being shown in the new "Beauty Culture" exhibit which opened this weekend at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles.

In addition to snapshots from some of Lauren's most well-known projects including Girl Culture, she was commissioned to shoot a 30-minute documentary for the exhibition that the New York Times called "one of the show's highlights." The film plays every hour at the exhibit and includes footage that ranges from toddler beauty pageants to female body builders, interviews with photographers featured in the show as well as a Harvard Medical School professor, as well as models, actresses including Jamie Lee Curtis.

"The whole point of [the exhibit] from my approach is deconstructing the world we live in and understanding what's behind these pictures in the magazines — understanding what we're seeing," Lauren told the LA Times. "We are so influenced by these things and most of the time we don't question them. It's [as common] as the air we breathe."

We couldn't be more excited for Lauren, who was honored at the opening gala on Friday. The exhibit opened to the public on Saturday and will run through November 27. For those of you who will be in L.A. soon, we hope you get the chance to stop by, and if not you can check out Lauren's reel over at the Chelsea website.