Lauren Greenfield

Early life and education

Greenfield was born in Boston, Massachusetts.

Greenfield graduated from Harvard University in 1987 with a B.A., majoring in Visual and Environmental Studies. Her Senior Thesis photography project on the French Aristocracy was called "Survivors of the French Revolution".

Photography

Greenfield's undergraduate thesis helped kick start her career as an intern for National Geographic Magazine. A subsequent grant from National Geographic provided financial support towards her debut monograph, "Fast Forward: Growing Up in the Shadow of Hollywood" (Knopf 1997). Five years after the release of "Fast Forward", Greenfield produced a second major body of work about the self-esteem crisis amongst American women, entitled "Girl Culture".

Greenfield's photographs have been regularly published in international publications, such as The New Yorker, New York, New York Times Magazine, The Sunday Times Magazine, Stern, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, La Repubblica, Time, Vanity Fair, People, National Geographic, ELLE, Harper's, Cosmopolitan, and Marie Claire.

Undergraduate years

From September 1985 to May 1986, while still an undergraduate at Harvard, Greenfield traveled around the world on a nine-month-long program created by the International Honors Program, entitled "Film Study and Anthropology." This experience exposed her to anthropological and documentary filmmaking in France, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Austria, India, Australia and Japan. In a 2012 interview with Sara Melson (for Harvardwood.com), Greenfield was quoted as saying "We watched many indigenous films, and we met with amazing directors. It was on that trip that I realized my calling. I wasn't sure if it would be sociology, film, photography, or anthropology, but looking at culture was my calling. When I got back to Harvard, I switched my major from Social Studies to Visual Studies. I soon realized that theory wasn't my medium, and I moved toward filmmaking and photography." At Harvard, Greenfield continued her filmmaking studies under the tutelage of established documentary filmmaker Robb Moss. In 1988, she co-directed a 25-minute film, Once You're In, about Irish illegal immigrants living in Boston.

THIN (HBO)

Greenfield subsequently directed THIN, a feature-length documentary for HBO, and published an accompanying book with the same title. THIN was selected for competition at the Sundance Film Festival in 2006. In September 2006, Greenfield received the prestigious Grierson Award for best documentary shown at the BFI London Film Festival. It also won the Grand Jury Prize at the Independent Film Festival of Boston, the Newport International Film Festival, and the Jackson Hole Film Festival. Greenfield received a 2007 Emmy nomination for Outstanding Directing For Nonfiction Programming for her work on THIN.

kids+money

Greenfield's follow-up short film, "kids + money", was selected as one of the top five nonfiction shorts in the world by Cinema Eye Honors 2009. The short also won the Audience Award for Best Short Film at the AFI Film Festival 2007, the Michael Moore Award for Best Documentary Film at the 2008 Ann Arbor Film Festival, the Gold Plaque, Documentary:Social/Political from The Hugo Television Awards 2008, and Best Documentary Short at Kids First Film Festival 2008. "kids + money" was also selected into the Official Shorts Program at the Sundance Film Festival (January 2008). The 32-minute film includes interviews with Los Angeles teenagers on the subject of money and how it affects their lives. HBO licensed North American broadcast rights to "kids + money", and the film has been distributed internationally.

Beauty CULTure

In February 2011, the Annenberg Space for Photography commissioned Greenfield to direct a short documentary film, "Beauty CULTure", to serve as the central focus of this record-setting "Beauty CULTure" exhibition (May - November 2011). Shot in Paris, New York and Los Angeles, the 30-minute film is a critical examination of "beauty in popular culture, the narrowing definition of beauty in contemporary society, and the influence of media messages on the female body image".

The Queen of Versailles

In January 2012 Greenfield received the Sundance Film Festival's Directing Award, US Documentary 2012 for her documentary feature film, entitled The Queen of Versailles, which was released theatrically in 2012. Previously, The Queen of Versailles was selected for the U.S. Documentary Competition at the Sundance Film Festival 2012 (The world premieres of 16 American documentary films). The Queen of Versailles was further honored by being selected to be the opening night documentary film for the Sundance Film Festival. The film was acquired by Magnolia Pictures on the first day of the festival. Also in 2012, she was awarded the Grand Jury Prize from the Brisbane International Film Festival (BIFFDOCS), a second Best Director Award from the RiverRun Film Festival, the Special Jury Documentary Feature prize from the deadCenter Film Festival. On October 22, 2012, The Queen of Versailles was nominated for Best Documentary Film, 2012 by the International Documentary Association (IDA). According to PBS/POV, The Queen of Versailles was ranked #2 of the Top 10 Documentaries of 2012, based on awards, nominations and other ranking criteria. In January 2013, Greenfield was nominated by the Directors Guild of America (DGA) for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentaries for the year 2012.

In March 2014, Greenfield won a lawsuit brought by the film's main subject David Siegel. Siegel claimed Greenfield had not obtained a proper release from the subjects of the film, in particular David Siegel and Westgate Resorts. An IFTA arbitrator supported Greenfield's position and also awarded her $750,000 for legal fees. A second lawsuit was brought by Siegel asking for return of the Siegel's "life rights" and damages of $5 million. The Siegel's "life rights" were assigned to Greenfield with the appearance releases for the film. In February 2014, an AAA arbitrator dismissed the $5 million in damages but ruled “the Life Story Releases are invalid and unenforceable."

#likeagirl

In June 2014 Greenfield directed a commercial spot for Always/Leo Burnett called #likeagirl, which went viral on the internet, culminating in over 58 million views of the US version on YouTube, 85 million YouTube views across all languages, and made over 4.4 billion impressions.

The spot was re-released as a 60-second piece during Super Bowl XLIX. Subsequently, the new #likeagirl Super Bowl piece was ranked #1 Super Bowl Spot by AdWeek, #1 Super Bowl Spot by AdAge, and garnered the highest social media activity of any Super Bowl Spot by TechCrunch.

In January 2015, Greenfield was nominated by the Directors Guild of America (DGA) for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Commercials for the year 2014.

The online spot was ranked #1 by Marketing Magazine in its "Top 10 Marketing Moments", #2 on Fast Company's "20 Best Ads of 2014", #3 of "2014 Top Spots of the Year" by SHOOT, and #4 on Google's"The 10 Most Watched Ads on YouTube in 2014".

The spot has won 6 CLIO Awards, including the GRAND CLIO for Public Relations as part of the 2014 CLIO AWARDS. It also received 5 separate winning cubes from at the 2015 ADC (Art Directors Clubl) Awards. At the 2015 Webby Awards, #likeagirl picked up 11 separate awards. At the 2015 D&AD Awards (United Kingdom), the spot received 8 "Pencil" nominations and won 5 "Pencil" Awards. At the London International Advertising Awards (LIAs), the spot received 8 awards. At the ANDYs, the spot picked up 3 Golds At the 2015 One Show Awards, the spot received 5 awards. The piece also picked up two awards at the AICP 2015, including a rare "Best of Show: Advertising Excellence/Single Commercial" recognition.

At the last major awards show of the year, the 2015 Cannes Lions, the spot was the recipient of 14 individual awards, including the prestigious Titanium Award, The Grand Prix, and the Glass Lions Award.

In December 2015, Greenfield was named the most awarded Director in 2015 by AdAge for her work on #likeagirl. In September 2015, #likeagirl won the 2015 Emmy Award for Best TV Commercial.

Museums and exhibitions

Her photography, including entire bodies of work like "Fast Forward", "Girl Culture", and "THIN", is in many major collections such as 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), the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, the International Center of Photography, the Center for Creative Photography, the Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), the Harvard University Archive, the Smith College Museum of Art, the Clinton Library, and the French Ministry of Culture.

Alongside her books, "Fast Forward", "Girl Culture", and "THIN", Greenfield produced three large-scale traveling exhibitions with the same names, which have been seen in museums and cultural institutions around the world.

In concert with the publication of her debut monograph, Fast Forward: Growing Up in the Shadow of Hollywood (Knopf 1997), her first major show, "Fast Forward" had its US debut at the International Center for Photography (ICP) on April 25, 1997 and was extended two additional months due to high attendance and critical acclaim (April 25 - September 7, 1997). The show has exhibited in France, the Netherlands, Italy, Russia and a number of cultural venues in North America.

The success of her second monograph, Girl Culture (Chronicle Books, 2002), and the accompanying show helped to cement her worldwide reputation as a documentary photographer. The book was reprinted five times by Chronicle Books and the show was exhibited at more than 29 venues around the world (France, Germany, the Netherlands, Russia and United States).

Her third major exhibition, THIN, accompanied both a feature-length documentary film, Thin (HBO, 2006), and a published photographic book, THIN (Chronicle Books, 2006). The exhibition debuted at The Women's Museum in Dallas, Texas and continued to exhibit through 2010.

In May 2011, Greenfield received the honor of being the only photographer to be chosen twice as a Featured Artist at The Annenberg Space for Photography, as part of its exhibition, "Beauty CULTure" (Los Angeles, May 21 - November 26, 2011), as one of only four Featured Photographers. Greenfield was also commissioned by The Annenberg Space for Photography to direct a 30-minute documentary film about the subject of the exhibition. The resultant film forms the centerpiece of the exhibition. Attendance by the public to the "Beauty CULTure" exhibition exceeded previous records. In October 2011, the exhibition received the Lucie Award for Curator(Kohle Yohannan)/Exhibition of the Year.

From June to November 2010, a collection of her photography from "Fast Forward" and "Girl Culture" was featured in "Engaged Observers: Documentary Photography Since the Sixties", a record-breaking photographic exhibition at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, curated by Brett Abbott. In October 2010, the exhibition received the Lucie Award for Curator(Brett Abbott)/Exhibition of the Year.

Personal life

Greenfield is married to Frank Evers, with whom she has two sons, and they reside in Venice, California.

Works and publications

Filmography