The Queen of Versailles: An American Allegory

'Everyone wants to be rich. If they can’t be rich, the next best thing is to feel rich. And if they don’t want to feel rich, then they’re probably dead.' - David Siegel 'Gifted with the prescience that can turn good artists into great ones, Greenfield could see that the plates were beginning to shift, that the old signifiers were losing their torque - that Jackie and David Siegel were the mold in which so many members of the contemporary billionaire classe would be cast.' - Ginia Bellafante PRAISE FOR THE QUEEN OF VERSAILLES DOCUMENTARY 'The Queen of Versailles began as a documentary about a timeshare billionaire, his ditzy wife, and their grotesque quest to build the largest house in the United States of America. It ended as perhaps the single best film on the Great Recession.' - Ezra Klein, The Washington Post 'Schadenfreude and disgust may be unavoidable, but to withhold all sympathy from the Siegels is to deny their humanity and shortchange your own. Marvel at the ornate frame, mock the vulgarity of the images if you want, but let’s not kid ourselves. If this film is a portrait, it is also a mirror.' - A.O. Scott, The New York Times '[One of] the best documentaries of all time.' - Vogue

The complete photographic series from the iconic documentary, where wealth, overreach, and reality-TV culture converge in one distinctly American aria by Lauren Greenfield, named by The New York Times as “America’s foremost visual chronicler of the plutocracy”. The complete photographic record of the iconic documentary, where extreme wealth, greed, overreach, and reality-TV culture converge in one distinctly American story told by Lauren Greenfield, named by The New York Times as “America’s foremost visual chronicler of the plutocracy”. In the age of the one percent (1%) – those with a net worth of over $30 million – this is a story that will shake-up the national conversation around oligarchy, inequality, and the definition of economic well-being. A century after Theodore Dreiser and F. Scott Fitzgerald mapped the American Dream’s promise and peril, Lauren Greenfield’s latest photographic monograph visually recaptures the origin story behind her hit 2012 critically acclaimed film, named by Vogue as one of the best documentaries of all time. It is published when the issues raised by her work are more critical than ever – and as they have ever been.