Geeta is in LA (and San Diego) this weekend, and she expressed interest in going to the Bill Owens: Suburbia exhibit at the Pacific Design Center. This blog entry is both a post-it note to myself and a suggestion for the rest of you -- I'm not intimately familiar with Owens' work, although I have a moderately good working knowledge of '60s-'70s Americana photography (Stephen Shore, et al). Some photos from Owens' 1973 Suburbia book are in the Portfolios section of his official website. For more background, the Art a GoGo site has an in-depth, candid interview with Owens:
Art a GoGo: What was your inspiration for “Suburbia”?
Bill Owens: When I came out of the Peace Corps in 1966, I knew that I wanted to be a photographer. I went back to San Francisco State and took a visual anthropology class from a guy named John Collier who had written a book on the subject. In 1968, I got my first job as a news photographer for the Livermore Independent, in Livermore, California. Everyone was moving to the suburbs, you could buy a house for $2,000, with only $99 down. A two car garage, a swimming pool, and a Kenmore washer and dryer….all of the things that come with the good life.
AAGG: Did you begin taking photographs for “Suburbia” as part of your work for the Livermore Independent?
Owens: Working for a newspaper gave me great access to the community. Doing six to ten assignments a day for the paper, I was in contact with the Chamber of Commerce, the Chief of Police, community groups, and schools. You begin to see the community from the inside out, where most people go to work all day, go home, and don’t see much of their own community.Initially, I went to the city of Livermore and asked them for a couple of thousand dollars to take photographs of the community for the city’s archives. I did that project, but in the back of mind I really wanted to do a bigger project. Really take on the idea of Levitt Town [sic], and study the sociology of who we are.
AAGG: Why photographs of the suburbs?
Owens: 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. It’s like Pogo says, “I have met the enemy and he is us!”
AAGG: So how did you go about shooting the photographs for “Suburbia”?
Owens: The photographs for “Suburbia” weren’t done by accident. I put together a shooting script of events that I wanted to photograph…Christmas, Thanksgiving, Fourth of July, Birthday’s, etc. I got a small grant, and began taking photographs every Saturday for a year, so basically “Suburbia” was shot in 52 days. After I finished the photographs, I realized that I had a book, but I never set out with the intention of doing a book.
In related news, Chris Barrus ponders the dark side of suburban bliss (part 93435452131311.0532): San Clemente in 1994 and 2006.
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