1%: Privilege in a Time of Global Inequality

“The story of inequality is impossible to ignore these days. My morning commute through Manhattan affords me glimpses of both appalling poverty and magnificent wealth. Everyone from billionaire businessmen to the Pope has spoken out against this troubling development.

While we may think we understand wealth through television and tabloids, what we see represents only a drop in the bucket. In 2014, the highest paid athlete in the world, Floyd Mayweather, made $105 million. In the same year, the highest paid hedge fund manager in the world, Kenneth Griffin, made $1.3 billion. And yet Mayweather is world famous, while for most people Griffin doesn’t register at all. And while we may think we understand inequality, in fact we don’t at all. Harvard Business School asked Americans how much they think major CEOs earn relative to ordinary workers. The median respondent thought the ratio was perhaps 30 to 1. The reality? It’s over to 350 to 1.”

In conjunction with the exhibition of The Other Hundred – Entrepreneurs, East Wing exhibits 16 images by award winning international photographers from this initiative curated by Myles Little: This is their response to the issue of skyrocketing wealth inequality around the globe, using contemporary documentary photography to map the ecosystem of privilege, from work to education to leisure.