Senior Portfolio: Jessica Kern: Artist Post 6: Bill Owens

Bill Owens

Bill Owens was born in 1938, in San Jose, California. Owens was born near the end of the Great Depression and right about the time suburbs started to spring up and become popular. Owens studied and graduated in 1963 from the Industrial Arts at the University of Chico in California. Later Owens married and joined the Peace Corps with his wife and both taught English at villages in Jamaica and India. While abroad teaching Owens became interested in photography after having the opportunity to watch a photographer document Peace Corps work. This led Owens to buy a camera; he began documenting the villages as well. Owens later became a photo editor for the San Francisco State Daily Gator. In 1968, Owens became interested in photography as a source for social commentary after documenting student movements at Berkley and San Francisco. After World War II, houses began to be mass produced creating miniature towns, “… by 1980 more than 60 million Americans had moved from the cities to the suburbs.” (Zanfi) Owens would document the development, the architecture, and the people who lived in these suburbs. Owens photographs simple everyday lives of American middle class. Owens received a Guggenheim fellowship in 1976.

Bill Owens is known for taking photographs of suburbs. In Owens book, “Suburbia” he documented everyday lives of people and would also document specific holiday events such as, 4^th of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthdays, etc. I find that my work to some extent relates to Owens, in my project I am playing on this idea of storytelling. Also, I am interested in how American families participate in holiday events. I am trying to show how oddly similar photographs can be, and how people do play roles in life, which can be captured through a picture. Owens said in relation to people enjoying his work, “People can identify with a little girl’s messy room (“Responsibility”), there’s an immediate identification. You can’t avoid being part of the middle class. People want that home, it’s freestanding, they have a back yard, a lawn, their own sense of privacy.”

Bill Owens, 1970-1972, Responsibility

"I wanted Christina to learn some responsibility for cleaning her room,

but it didn't work."

These original iconic American family photos that Owens seemed to take inspire my project that I am currently working on. I appreciate Owens work for the fact that he was genuinely interested in making the suburbs appear appealing to people who otherwise consider the suburbs as boring. Owens stated in an interview, “Most people look at the suburbs as “ticky tacky” little houses and say that there’s no culture, and then they go back to the city. I’m not interested in the city, I’m interested in the middle class…I was interested in making the suburbs a better place to live.”