In the late 1960s, Bill Owens began photographing residents of the new suburban developments in the San Francisco Bay Area town of Livermore, where he lived. While working full-time for the local paper, the Livermore Independent, he began making the first photographs for his “Suburbia” series, working from a well-defined shooting script. Some of his subjects were people he had photographed for the Independent; some were relatives and friends; some were people who responded to the advertisements Owens placed, looking for individuals who would be amenable to being photographed at home.
His first photo-book, Suburbia, published in 1972, became an instant classic. He followed that success with two additional books in the planned series,Our Kind of People (1975) and Working: I Do It For The Money (1977). This exhibition presents a selection of largely unknown and previously unpublished photographs from that body of work. These photographs, mostly taken between 1968 and 1980, would have comprised the fourth book in the Suburbia series, Leisure.
In these hilarious pictures—shot in both black-and-white and color—Owens shows middle-class Americans engaged in a myriad of leisure activities, from sports to shopping to eating. He demonstrates a clear affection for suburbanites as he mildly teases them for pursuing the tainted pleasures of the American consumer lifestyle. While others might criticize the denizens of suburbia for their materialism and emptiness, Owens marvels at the carnivalesque wonder of it all, using stark documentary images to peel back the layers of a world familiar to millions of Americans.
