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I get a lot of compliments on the front room wall. I like Italian Syrocco floral designs over the mantle. It goes with the Palos Verde rock fireplace, from the series Suburbia
1972
8 x 10 in. (20.32 x 25.4 cm)
Bill Owens (San Jose, California, 1938 - ) Primary
The House Imaginary, April 20, 2018 – August 19, 2018, Second Floor North, Second Floor Central Skylight, and Third Floor South Galleries, San José Museum of Art.
Bill Owens: Ordinary Folks, July 16, 2011- February 5, 2012, Historic Wing, Paul L. Davies Gallery, San José Museum of Art.
The House Imaginary (2018)
Like a visual anthropologist, San Jose – born Bill Owens recorded the customs, social relationships, and domestic spaces that characterized the South Bay’s middle-class culture in the 1970s. While working as a photojournalist for the Independent, a local newspaper in Livermore, Owens used his weekends to document his surroundings as a true insider. His subjects were friends who invited him into their homes. Suburbia, the first in a series of four books Owens dedicated to the American dream, focuses on the East Bay suburbs. Our Kind of People followed in 1975, an examination of political, religious, scholastic, and sports groups.
Owens’s photographs record a generational phenomenon: the demographic and psychological shift of rapid migration of city apartment dwellers to newly produced suburban houses. For some, these photographs resonate with fond memories of San Jose’s past. Others, however, are reminded of the racially discriminatory housing policies and exclusionary tactics that mark the darker side of the American dream of homeownership.
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I get a lot of compliments on the front room wall. I like Italian Syrocco floral designs over the mantle. It goes with the Palos Verde rock fireplace, from the series Suburbia
Photograph
19728 x 10 in. (20.32 x 25.4 cm)
Bill Owens (San Jose, California, 1938 - ) Primary
Object Type: Photograph
Medium and Support: Vintage gelatin silver print on paper
Credit Line: Gift of Robert Harshorn Shimshak and Marion Brenner
Accession Number: 2010.20.01
Exhibition
The House Imaginary, April 20, 2018 – August 19, 2018, Second Floor North, Second Floor Central Skylight, and Third Floor South Galleries, San José Museum of Art.
Bill Owens: Ordinary Folks, July 16, 2011- February 5, 2012, Historic Wing, Paul L. Davies Gallery, San José Museum of Art.
SJMA Label Text
The House Imaginary (2018)
Like a visual anthropologist, San Jose – born Bill Owens recorded the customs, social relationships, and domestic spaces that characterized the South Bay’s middle-class culture in the 1970s. While working as a photojournalist for the Independent, a local newspaper in Livermore, Owens used his weekends to document his surroundings as a true insider. His subjects were friends who invited him into their homes. Suburbia, the first in a series of four books Owens dedicated to the American dream, focuses on the East Bay suburbs. Our Kind of People followed in 1975, an examination of political, religious, scholastic, and sports groups.
Owens’s photographs record a generational phenomenon: the demographic and psychological shift of rapid migration of city apartment dwellers to newly produced suburban houses. For some, these photographs resonate with fond memories of San Jose’s past. Others, however, are reminded of the racially discriminatory housing policies and exclusionary tactics that mark the darker side of the American dream of homeownership.
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Dimensions
- Sheet Dimensions: 8 x 10 in. (20.32 x 25.4 cm)
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