#38 AMERICAN LEGEND BILL OWENS
Today the photographer's photographer, or documentarian's documenter, Bill Owens, whose work and seminal book Suburbia inspired many to discover a story could be found in the most ordinary of places, people and times. The first in a series of features of Bill, the farmer's son who went on to show pictures around the world of the American Dream.
In the ‘60s and ‘70s Bill Owens worked as a jobbing photographer for a newspaper in Livermore in the San Francisco Bay area. He’d reached his calling on a roundabout route, fortune and travels and a stint in the Peace Corps, all playing important roles. But when he arrived in Livermore, he found he was photographing the people of communities living in these huge new American dream housing developments, the station wagon, the perfectly manicured front lawns, the two point five kids, the dog – and having to make pictures in places where as he says; “There often weren’t pictures at all.”
Bill who grew up on a farm, was now living amongst new people; his new people.
And then one day, he made a picture, a picture of a four year old, a neighbouring kid called Richie on a trike carrying a toy gun. It was one frame of a typical moment in a typical day in a typical street within a typical tract housing development. Suburbia, the project was born.
Works from the book hang in museums all over the world. Ken Light’s Witness in Our Time: Working Lives of Documentary Photographers now features that picture and many photographers look to Bill as the reason they do what they do, in the style that they do it. Whilst documentary is seemingly a buzz word today used attached by photographers to describe everything and anything in all genres from sports, news, fashion to the social photography world, (I know, I’m one of those people) back then, in the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s, this was a style still popularly developing from the more contrived style many were used to working with or seeing.
As always, I welcome your thoughts of Bill’s work and vision to discuss on this week’s Friday Photowalk edition. Send your questions and remarks: studio@photographydaily.show
Photography copyright Bill Owens, not to be used without permission
