2005, "Bill Owens," Routledge

For The 20th Century Encyclopedia of Photography, 2006

Bill Owens' photographs consist largely of bourgeois Americans living on the west coast during the late twentieth century.  He spotlights anonymous individuals in casual, real life activities.  His work is a significant contribution to portrait, documentary, and lifestyle photography.

Owens was born and raised in northern California.  He was interested in photography at an early age, but is largely self-taught.  Following college, where he studied writing, he was married and left with his wife to serve in the Peace Corps. Upon returning to California three years later, he studied photography briefly at San Francisco State University and acquired a position as a photographer for a local newspaper, the Livermore Independent.

The artist's work with the newspaper satisfied his interest in reality as a subject matter.  He worked as a documentary photographer and recorded a diverse amount of subjects and locations.  He took note of the increase in suburban life, both in physical space and as a dominating ideology.  Not only were natural, undeveloped spaces being taken over by planned building projects, but materialism and the pursuit of the American dream was dominating the lifestyle of the mainstream.

Owens' most accomplished work, now best known in its finished version as the photography book Suburbia (1972), began as a grant funded project on area citizens in his community.  After receiving the grant in the late 1960's, Owens created a shooting script for a series of stereotypical events that characterized suburban life in his area.  He utilized his neighborhood as a resource for events such as a a parade or casual recreation.  He also documented a significant number of his neighbors posing with their most valued possessions, such as cars, motor homes, or furniture.  The result was an anthrop/sociological collection of photographically exquisite images of individuals displaying sincere pride in their homes, families, possessions, and community rituals. 

The photographs are formally advanced in that most appear finely focused and balanced in lighting.  There is a consistent use of black and white film and a dominance of objective compositions.  There are a great number of straight on shots that aim at individuals posed and smiling.  Owens however, also occasionally includes odd angles and strange distances that add an evocative perspective on the seemingly ordinary suburban life.  For example, a close-up on a pantry that overflows with preserved and canned foods, seems to be using the formal properties of the photograph to suggest the shocking confrontational view one obtains when opening a cabinet, which becomes intensified by gluttonous contents.  Owens also employs use of color for certain images.  His images of a kitchen and party are intensified by color, as is one of a child in a costume.

Walker Evans is an important predecessor to Owens.  Like Evans, Owens captures the domestic and social life of America.  Some of Owens' vacant images also compare to work by Evans.  Another important predecessor to Owens is Robert Frank, whose increased use of the human subject in the western United States pairs more closely to Owens' portraits.  In the genre of portrait photography, Owens had numerous contemporaries such as Garry Winogrand, Bruce Davidson, and Danny Lyons.  This is particularly noted in Winogrand's images of middle class America in Texas.  In general, Owens can be considered with Davidson, Lyons, and Winogrand as part of a movement of social realist photography.

Following the photographic documentation and completion of the grant-funded project, Owens had the opportunity to make the book Suburbia.  When the printing of the book was in place, he returned to the subjects of the photographs for releases and to provide quotes.  The photographs had been taken almost a year earlier and as a result, many of the quotes seem out of place.  In general the comments indicate a naïve generation, content to live in the suburbs and seemingly unaware of the world on an international level.  For example, one individual describes, "The best way to have fun … is to come out on a Saturday morning and pull weeds in a median strip," implying that fun is a priority and that pleasure is derived by maintaining the local community.  The black and Asian families are paired with comments that imply they feel as though the suburbs deprive them of a certain cultural interaction. Other comments indicative of the suburban mind frame include, "we're not doing too badly," and a couple who comments on the joy of being able to sit in front of their home and "watch the traffic go by."  The inhabitants of the neighborhoods are secure in their claim of a space and of possessions, and Owens documents what they offer to him willfully.

Owens has explained that he admires a quote by an unnamed individual, which states, The main thing in life is to live it your way. Owens' photographs document the many ways in which people were living and spending their time and money during the late 20th century.  He documents people, places, and their possessions.  He shows the relationship between way of life and income, represented by the diverse ways of spending (i.e. boats, cars, motor homes, parties). Owens' also documented scenes of the times such as both domestic and liberated women in various manners implying the metamorphosis of feminism during the era.  Images also show important events such as the space walk of Apollo 15.  The shot of the swimming pool that Hockney painted implies a relationship between Owens photographs and the fine art of the period, and the importance of status to an affluent community.  Some of Owens' images have become more significant with time such as a television broadcast of Ronald Reagan or a child playing with a toy gun.

It should be noted that Owens was working to document his environment in a realist manner.  Suburbia is a largely objective collection of images created out of a sense of responsibility to the community.  Owens even included his own family as one of the closing shots of the book.  His family proved so important to him, that he left photography to create a prosperous brewing company. 

Owens also created photographs for books Our Kind of People, about social groups and Working: I do it for the money, about occupations.  His book Suburbia was re-published in 1999.  He now works with digital photography for fashion magazines such as Flaunt and is developing a new book of photographs about leisure.