Long before ‘mean girls’ became part of the popular lexicon and Paris Hilton had exhausted her 15 minutes, photographer and documentary filmmaker Lauren Greenfield was focused on the peculiarities of modern-day youth culture. In 1997, she published her first book, ‘Fast Forward,’ an award-winning collection of photographs documenting the fast-track trajectory of kids growing up in Los Angeles under the inescapable influence of Hollywood. Five years later, she released ‘Girl Culture,’ probing even more deeply into the subject of self-image and the often detrimental sway of popular culture, this time exclusively as it related to females in cities everywhere in the U.S. Prints from both these series are in the current J. Paul Getty Museum exhibition ‘Engaged Observers: Documentary Photography Since the Sixties,’ on view through November 14. Many of the photographs in this major exhibition, from Philip Jones Griffiths’ 1971 ‘Vietnam, Inc.’ series to Sebasti’o Salgado’s enormous ‘Migrations: Humanity in Transition’ project, bear witness to faraway places, with unsettling close-ups of war and poverty.   ’Lauren Greenfield turns the lens back onto us,’ says Brett Abbott, associate curator of photographs at the Getty, who consciously chose the first gallery to display the ‘we are they’ quality of her photos. ‘This is a subject people can relate to immediately.’ Because visitors enter and exit through this first gallery, Abbott hopes the route encourages them to consider how Greenfield’s work fits into the larger tradition of documentary photography. It’s no accident, for instance, that selected images from Mary Ellen Mark’s famous 1988 ‘Streetwise’ series, an unflinching look at runaways in Seattle, hang nearby. Like Mark’s groundbreaking work, Greenfield’s sociological study of adolescent culture is at once fearless and intimate, harsh and poetic.   Thirteen-year-old blondes preen precociously in the mirror while applying makeup before attending their seventh-grade party in Edina, Minnesota, leaving little doubt about their fierce social ambition.   A three-year-old in a tutu lounges comfortably on a couch in Barney’s shoe department in Beverly Hills, as if daydreaming about all the material goods in her future.   A young girl sits passively next to a pool at a Fourth of July party, the post-operative bandage on her nose looming almost as large as the balloons surrounding her. Another girl appears in profile in the foreground’are we to notice her ‘perfect’ nose?   The vivid hues in these photographs contrast sharply with the colorless tone in another picture that depicts a woman being weighed at an eating-disorders clinic in Coconut Creek, Florida. So distraught by the idea of any gain, she mounts the scale backward, giving us full access to her apprehensive face.   At a weight-loss clinic in the Catskills, the soulful eyes of a 15-year-old gaze into the camera with the mystique of a modern-day Mona Lisa, despite the ironic presence of the word ‘Sugar’ emblazoned on her T-shirt.   Though the subject matter may seem disparate, all the photos speak to the influence of popular culture on how we live, and the extremes that girls will go to meet the expectations of our consumer society.   Having grown up in Los Angeles, the 44-year-old Greenfield, who attended Crossroads School in Santa Monica, knows these tendencies firsthand.   ’I was’thinking about my chronic teenage dieting, my gravitation toward good-looking and thin friends for as long as I can remember, and the importance of clothes and status symbols in the highly materialistic, image-oriented Los Angeles milieu in which I grew up,’ she wrote in an introductory essay for ‘Girl Culture.’ Elsewhere in the essay she elaborates: ‘Understanding the dialectic between the extreme and the mainstream’the anorexic and the dieter, the stripper and the teenager who bares her midriff or wears a thong’is essential to understanding contemporary female identity.’ Greenfield graduated from Harvard in 1987 with a degree in visual studies and anthropology. She began her career as an intern for National Geographic, photographing assignments abroad.   ’I drew a lot from that experience,’ she said during a recent phone interview from her home in Venice, where she lives with her husband and two sons. ‘I learned how to use photography to tell a story, not just as a way to illustrate a writer’s story.’   She also learned that looking at the exotic was not her thing in terms of subject matter. ‘I’m influenced very much by people like Robert Frank and Garry Winogrand, photographers who could make us see things anew by focusing on the everyday world.’   The everydayness Greenfield sought out was in Los Angeles, where she returned in 1992 to document the world she was brought up in. ‘People mistook the ‘Fast Forward’ series as an indictment of Los Angeles,’ she said. ‘It was never meant to be that, although L.A. is the bellwether of popular culture.’   She points out how the things that were controversial about her Hollywood project at the time wouldn’t be at all today. ‘These days, there’s a lack of self-consciousness about money and consumption,’ said Greenfield. ‘That is a cultural shift. People weren’t talking about things like that then.’   As the title of the exhibition ‘Engaged Observers’ suggests, Greenfield said she possesses no pretense about objectivity in her work. This is particularly true as it relates to ‘Thin,’ her third landmark photo series that evolved into a full-length documentary film she directed in 2006. ‘I had intense and close relationships with these women; trust was very important,’ Greenfield said of the experience documenting how obsession with body image leads to mental illness.   In her most recent documentary, ‘kids + money,’ Greenfield returns to a familiar theme. The award-winning 2008 film examines the spending habits of Los Angeles teenagers from all walks of life, including interviews with teens in Pacific Palisades.   The film will be screened in the Harold M. Williams Auditorium at The Getty Center on Sunday, September 6 at 1 p.m., followed by a presentation and Q&A with Lauren Greenfield.   The Getty Center is located at 1200 Getty Center Dr. in Brentwood. Parking is $15. Contact: (310) 440-7300 or visit www.getty.edu.

Historian and novelist Robert Rosenstone will debut his new novel ‘Red Star, Crescent Moon: A Muslim-Jewish Love Story,’ with a reading on Saturday, September 11, from 4 to 6 p.m. at his home in Pacific Palisades. The reading will take place at 5 p.m.   The novel is set in Spain against the vibrant and colorful background of a women’s film festival, the seductive activities of a movie star, and the actions of terrorists who wish to reclaim that country for Islam. Told in multiple voices, the novel confronts some of the major cultural and political dilemmas of our time, creating a world of characters caught in webs of historical misunderstanding. Embedded within the story is a meditation on the meaning of the past, how we depict and remember it, how our histories shape us, how traditions at once create and limit our identities and our feelings for other human beings and cultures. Accompanying the reading will be a photographic exhibition, ‘Pilgrimage in Al Andalus,’ by Rosenstone’s wife, Nahid Massoud, who provides a visual recollection of her husband’s research for the book in Andalucia, Spain. Rosenstone is a professor of history at Caltech and the author of a dozen books of history, criticism, memoir and fiction. Massoud, a native of Kabul, Afghanistan, came to America on a student visa in 1977 and was given political asylum in the U.S. after the Soviet invasion endangered her family, all of whom later escaped to the U.S. She directs Sharq, an art space at her home devoted to contemporary works by artists from the Middle and Far East. Please RSVP by visiting sharqart@verizon.net or calling (310) 454-6826. Rosenstone will also read and sign ‘Red Star, Crescent Moon’ on Thursday, September 23 at 7:30 p.m. at Village Books, 1049 Swarthmore Ave.

Karl Greenfeld and L.A. Times and NPR film critic Kenneth Turan will conduct a conversation on Greenfeld’s latest book, ‘Boy Alone: A Brother’s Memoir,’ on Friday, September 10 at 7:30 p.m. at Village Books, 1049 Swarthmore. In his book, Greenfield, a magazine journalist, and author of ‘China Syndrome,’ tells the story of his life growing up with his brother and chronicling the hopes, dreams and realities of life with an autistic sibling. Greenfeld, who has returned to live in Pacific Palisades, knew from an early age that his little brother, Noah, was different from other children. He was unable to talk or tie his shoes, and while sweet natured, was prone to violent outbursts. Specialists, doctors and social workers diagnosed Noah with the general description: autism. His parents, Josh and Fuomi, dedicated their lives to caring for Noah, which proved to be a challenging, often painful experience, which Josh detailed in a bestselling trilogy of books, starting with ‘ A Child Called Noah.’ ‘Boy Alone’ reveals the complexity of growing up in Noah’s shadow, revealing the mix of rage, confusion and love that define the author’s childhood. Greenfeld graduated from Palisades High School (1982) and Sarah Lawrence College. He lived in Paris and New York City for two years, trying to establish himself as a freelance journalist. He has been an editor and writer for Time and Sports Illustrated and is the author of two previous books about Asia, ‘Speed Tribes’ and ‘Standard Deviations.’ He lives with his wife, Silka, and children Esmee, 11, and Lola, 8.