Jim Goldberg's "Rich and Poor"

March 11, 2025 6:00 PM

"By depicting the rich and the poor in their respective environments, we see life as it is lived by our means, which tells a far different story than would portraits taken outside of these contexts. Jim Goldberg’s other key innovation in this book is how he has allowed his subjects to attempt to capture themselves. As part of his process, he asks for their commentary on their own photos, giving the subject an opportunity to add context, personality, and self-perception to each photo in handwritten reflections. These annotations change not only the meaning of the book, but also the meaning of the act of taking the photos." - Abbey Lee
posted by Lemkin (10 comments total)

Always interesting to see what the people over at Magnum are up to. Thanks for this.
posted by Rykey at 7:19 PM on March 11 [1 favorite]

Wow these are really well done and breathtaking. I love the personalized notes. Thank you for sharing this, I’m so glad I saw his work and these stories
posted by glaucon at 7:55 PM on March 11 [3 favorites]

Missing the middle class only eating salad out of an oiled salad bowl
posted by Carillon at 8:24 PM on March 11

Huh, I had never heard of this book. Very cool. It's striking how rich people are so much richer now. Also how poor and rich people have so much more stuff now.

The article says all the poor people pictured live in the same residential hotel.
posted by latkes at 9:53 PM on March 11 [1 favorite]

This is very much in the same spirit as American Pictures. Jakob Holdt is a Danish photographer/activist who traveled the depths of American poverty and wealth in the 70's, and showed scenes of deprivations and despair beside privilege and entitlements.

The whole book is on Internet Archive.

[Holdt's "adventures" in misery are actually the ones which inspired me to leave Denmark in 1984 and travel to the USA, where I too drove from coast to coast looking for extreme experiences in a somehow-similar manner. Unfortunately, after 3 years of that, I settled down in San Francisco, and eventually over-stayed by 35 years. But that's a different story.]
posted by growabrain at 11:59 PM on March 11 [4 favorites]

cf Hungry Planet: displaying a week's food [and its cost] for families in Germany [£320] etc. and Bhutan [£3.20] etc. - Guardian link 2013 & MetaPrev 2011.
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:38 AM on March 12 [2 favorites]

I am also comfortable with both my inferiors and superiors, but I guess you'll all have to take my word for it about superiors.
posted by biffa at 3:18 AM on March 12

On hearing that Clare Booth Luce was polite to her inferiors, Dorothy Parker asked, “Where does she find them?”
posted by Lemkin at 5:57 AM on March 12 [4 favorites]

I've never read the actual book, but the pictures from the Guardian are framed a bit too tight, and thus don't capture the differences of the expansive lives of the rich vs the tight lives of the poor. In plenty of them, I personally couldn't tell a difference - maybe the clothes in some give it away. The written captions are more valuable in that aspect.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:16 PM on March 12 [1 favorite]

Thanks for turning me into the work of Jim Goldberg.
posted by ckoerner at 12:34 PM on March 14