One-night only, book launch & talk

Tuesday, Jan 19, 7:30 PM

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On Tuesday, January 19, Myles Little shared the story of his book and the traveling exhibit he curated which accompanies it. NYU Visiting Scholar Jean-Philippe Dedieu moderated the discussion, and the following contributing photographers joined us: Kevin Cooley, David Leventi, Juliana Sohn, Jaqueline Hassink, and Floto+Warner.

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The book was edited by Myles, with texts by Geoff Dyer and Joseph Stiglitz

In March 2015, billionaire private equity investor Paul Tudor Jones II predicted that the wealth gap would close “…in one of three ways: either through revolution, higher taxes, or wars.” To curate 1%: Privilege in a Time of Global Inequality, Myles took as a departure point Edward Steichen's 1955 project The Family of Man. Steichen’s aim with Family was to capture "the essential oneness of mankind.” But sixty years later, the colossal inequality underpinning the world's societies means that for Myles's purposes, Steichen's goal was "less and less viable." (As example, the six-heir Walmart fortune accounts for more wealth than what the bottom 42% of Americans possess.) Thus, Myles crafted his project to reflect such distortion, aiming to "borrow the language of privilege and use it to observe and critique privilege.” In the end, he landed on “a small number of polished, well-crafted, medium format photographs by some of today’s best photographers."

~ Anna Van Lenten