Thin (Hardcover)

by Lauren Greenfield (Author), Joan Jacobs Brumberg (Introduction) "Everybody wants to be thin. I've been here for almost three weeks, and I'm gaining weight way too fast. When I was thin, I had..." (more)
Key Phrases: major anxiety, Johnson City, Salt Lake City, Deerfield Beach

Editorial Reviews

Review
'Thin' exposes chilling self-hatred
Photographs by Lauren Greenfield look at how external appearances can clash mightily with self-perceptions. And more.

Opportunities abound for the documentarian of human misery: war, hunger, poverty, homelessness, domestic violence, abuse. For the "concerned photographer," a term coined in the late 1960s to describe a commitment to conscientious, humane witness, it's a matter of deciding where to turn, what to focus on and how.

Lauren Greenfield, a photojournalist based in L.A. and a member of the photo agency VII, has directed her attention since the early '90s to phenomena that arise out of our culture of excess problems born of economic affluence and social privilege, media saturation and the societal drive toward immediate gratification. She chronicles the external manifestations of mainstream America's compromised soul.

Her first major project, published in the book "Fast Forward: Growing Up in the Shadow of Hollywood," examined sexually accelerated, artifice-happy youth culture.

"Girl Culture," her next project, expanded upon one facet of the first: body image as expression of identity and reflection of cultural expectation.

Her newest work zooms in closer still. "Thin" takes a look at residents of the Renfrew Center, a Florida treatment facility for women with eating disorders.

The book "Thin" was recently published by Chronicle Books, and "Thin," the documentary, is scheduled to air at 9 p.m. Nov. 14 on HBO. The large color photographs from the project on view at Fahey / Klein Gallery constitute no more than a slender slice from the overall enterprise.

They are not meant to stand alone, nor do they communicate consistently well in this context. They need the partnership of words, and they get that brilliantly in the book, in the form of personal narratives and diary entries by the subjects, commentary by medical and sociological experts and a tone-setting introduction by Greenfield.

Although the project seems to fit easily on a continuum with her other work, Greenfield asserts that societal conditions are only part of the story of "Thin"; mental illness is the real issue.

The text in the book fleshes out the particularities of each woman's interior struggle.

The pictures describe external appearances that clash mightily with their self-perceptions. Where we see famine-level emaciation, they see an ideal not quite reached. We see quite literally in the portrait of Ata with her arms clasped overhead the attenuated limbs and knobby joints of an Egon Schiele figure; they see in themselves the ample, overloaded bodies of a Rubens.

One of the most captivating pairs of pictures shows a young woman named Aiva on her first day of treatment and 10 weeks later, upon completion. A barbed reversal of the diet ad pitch, the "before" photograph shows 16-year-old Aiva looking like a bony, angry preteen. "After," the angles of her face have softened, her chest, torso and arms have filled out, and she has blossomed into a healthy (and happier) looking young woman.

A selection of photographs from Greenfield's previous two series is also on view at the gallery, and they are pithy evidence of all sorts of cultural distortions having to do with wanting (and having) too much, too fast. They are situational tableaux, intertwining of character, context and action.

The images on view from "Thin" are largely portraits, many taken on the grassy institutional grounds of the Renfrew Center. They introduce the players in this painful saga of self-loathing and self-improvement, but they can't deliver much more in the way of feeling or fact. A few are chilling in their depiction of the extremes these women have reached through purging and restricting, as well as cutting.

Greenfield's pictures are intimate and candid. Their authenticity derives from the trust required between photographer and subject, trust that each will deal only in raw truths, and with respect.

The gravity never lets up. But it does edge aside occasionally to make room for irony and even dark humor, as in the photograph of one Renfrew patient with her father, a man with sizable paunch, sagging double chin and a tattoo of the female ideal, a sexy pinup girl, on his forearm.

The pictures are descendants of the work of Mary Ellen Mark and Larry Fink. They're the findings of an astute cultural anthropologist feeling her way and helping us feel ours through the familiar and the outrageous, through individual trauma and societal disease. -Los Angeles Times

Product Description
Critically acclaimed for Girl Culture and Fast Forward, Lauren Greenfield continues her exploration of contemporary female culture with Thin, a groundbreaking book about eating disorders. Greenfield's photographs are paired with extensive interviews and journal entries from twenty girls and women who are suffering from various afflictions. We meet 15-year-old Brittany, who is convinced that being thin is the only way to gain acceptance among her peers; Alisa, a divorced mother of two whose hatred of her body is manifested in her relentless compulsion to purge; Shelly, who has been battling anorexia for six years and has had a feeding tube surgically implanted in her stomach; as well as many others. Alongside these personal stories are essays on the sociology and science of eating disorders by renowned researchers Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Dr. David Herzog, and Dr. Michael Strober. These intimate photographs, frank voices, and thoughtful discussions combine to make Thin not only the first book of its kind but also a portrait of profound understanding.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Chronicle Books (October 12, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 081185633X
• ISBN-13: 978-0811856331
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #200,276 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing., October 18, 2006

By	Kate "..*s.u.N.s.h.i.N.e.*.." (South-western Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews

This book is beautifully put together. Like a picture story book, this documentary of women struggling with/recovering from eating disorders is an eye opening look at how quickly and deeply someone can lose themselves and become a hollow shell of who they once were. It's an honest portrayal of a serious disease and its sufferers. The photographs, as all of Lauren Greenfield's photography I've seen, are beautiful and haunting. **Possible trigger for those in recovery. ** I highly recommend this book.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Realistic Look at the Mental and Physical Ravages of EDs, April 5, 2007

By	Elaina - See all my reviews

As a former anorexic (purging type--in recovery for ten years and two months exactly!), I bought this book partially expecting to be triggered by the graphic pictures of women who reached weights that I never "achieved." Instead I found an honest, raw and, ultimately, tragic portrait of what it's like to still be in the grips of an eating disorder. I didn't expect this book to make me feel this way, but I'm so grateful to be recovered--even when I think my stomach sticks out and that I have thunder thighs!

Thanks Lauren, for reminding me of what it's like to be embroiled in an all-consuming obsession with food and weight and worth--of never being good enough, of letting an inanimate object (food) determine my value. I'm happy to be free, even though I never got deathly "thin." I was thin and am thin . . . enough.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Impressively done and very graphic, January 17, 2007

By	K. M. Olmstead (Grand Island, NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As someone recovering from an eating disorder, I have noticed that there is a continuing problem with much of the eating disorder literature and media available today; while it effectively serves as an educational tool for those trying to understand the dark world of eating disorders, it can often serve as a trigger for those trying to recover from an eating disorder. However I have found that Lauren Greenfield's work, both on her Thin documentary and book, does not do this. In fact, Greenfield's work is the first piece of information on eating disorders that has truly repulsed me from the very condition of having an eating disorder. This is the first time I have ever felt this way, and that is very significant, because the difficult part of breaking away from disordered eating is actually seeing that it is a repulsive act.
For this reason, I highly recommend both the book and the documentary for those who actively want to recover, and need inspiration, and to those who are having a difficult time understanding why a friend or loved one is going through it. Greenfield pulls no punches and does not sugar coat any aspect of the girls recovering at the Renfrew Center in Florida (to my knowledge there are no males shown at this facility when the filming occurs, despite the fact that there are men with eating disorders too) Be warned the footage is graphic - there is a lot of vulgar language, views of these women throwing up (one even literally tosses her small dog out of the bathroom, then locks the dog in a crate just so she can have privacy while she vomits), and both the book and the DVD show women's scarred bodies both from self-mutilation and from suicide attempts.
All in all, I am very impressed with Greenfield's work. Well done.