Chris Arnade

He did this through photographs posted on social media and articles in various media, most often The Guardian. He does not call himself a journalist; some journalists object to his work and some sources refer to him as a journalist. Arnade developed what he calls the McDonald's test, saying that a person's attitude towards the fast-food restaurant McDonald's indicates whether the person lives a life of relative privilege.

Arnade was born around 1965 and was brought up in San Antonio, Florida, a conservative, Roman Catholic community. His father was of Jewish heritage, had escaped Nazi Germany and had become a professor in the US. His mother was a homemaker who raised a family of seven children (Chris has five brothers and one sister) and then became an academic librarian. Arnade went to college and then to Johns Hopkins University, where he earned a PhD in particle physics.

Arnade started working on Wall Street in 1993 as a quantitative analyst. A former colleague told The Wall Street Journal that he frequently argued politics with other traders, most of whom were in the "libertarian wing of the Republican Party"; Arnade eventually tired of "hearing [traders] who had lost millions and gotten bailed out complaining that Obamacare raised their taxes." Arnade called his work on Wall Street "intellectual grift". Arnade worked on Wall Street for 20 years, with the last position being on the foreign trading desk at Citigroup. During the 2008 financial crisis, he became more disillusioned with his industry and began riding the subway to its last stop then walking home, which often led him through the Bronx, where he talked to people and began taking their photos. He also did volunteer work in the Bronx, with the Hunts Point Alliance for Children, which led him into engagement with people who lived there. In 2012, his mother died. The same year, Citi shut down the trading desk he was working on, due to new regulations. He accepted a buyout from Citi in 2012 and retired. Then he began to spend all his time exploring the lives of poor and working-class people. To deal with the reduced income, his family moved from Brooklyn to upstate New York.

Arnade identifies politically as a socialist. He was an atheist during his Wall Street days, but says "it's more complicated now".