Bill Owens: Ordinary Folks

  • Bill Owens
    Untitled (2 women in evening attire), from the "Temporary Organizations" series [a subset of "Our Kind of People"], circa 1975
    Gelatin silver print, 8 × 19 inches
    Gift of Robert Harshorn Shimshak and Marion Brenner

  • Bill Owens
    It's fun to break up glass. We're doing our thing for ecology and the Boy Scouts will give us a badge for working here, from the “Suburbia” series, ca 1971
    Gelatin silver print, 14 × 11 inches
    Museum purchase with funds contributed by the Collections Committee

  • A black and white photograph of two men standing next to a very large computer. They appear to be in a large office space, with traffic cones to the right of them. Next to them is large metal rack is filled with boxes and computer equipment.

    Bill Owens
    Untitled (2 men at Lawrence Livermore Lab?), from the "Working (I Do It For The Money)" series, circa 1967-19977
    Gelatin silver print, 8 × 10 inches
    Gift of Robert Harshorn Shimshak and Marion Brenner

  • A black and white photograph of a man wearing a striped shirt and fringed leather vest standing in front of a Debbies ice cream truck. It is covered in stickers that note the price of ice cream treats and the window is open, also partially covered in stickers.

    Bill Owens

    Untitled (Ice Cream Man—“Debbie’s 447–7660”), from the “Working” series, ca 1976–77 

    Gelatin silver print, 8 × 10 inches

    Gift of Robert Harshorn Shimshak and Marion Brenner

“Ordinary folks doing ordinary things”—that is how photographer Bill Owens described his subjects. Like a visual anthropologist, Owens astutely recorded the customs, symbols, and social relationships that characterized American middle-class culture in the 1970s. Owens adopted an air of objectivity that recalls the New Topographics, a generation of photographers such as Lewis Baltz, Robert Adams, and Joel Deal, who portrayed the built environment with detachment.

Owens took up photography after studying auto mechanics at California State University, Sacramento, and serving in the Peace Corps. He landed a job as a photojournalist for the Independent, a local newspaper in Livermore, and on weekends documented his surroundings with the clarity of a true insider. (Born in San Jose in 1938, Owens was raised on the outskirts of Sacramento in the Central Valley.) His subjects were his friends and neighbors who willingly invited him into their homes. He published these images in the now seminal series, “Suburbia” (1972). He went on to create the sequels

“Our Kind of People” (1975) and “Working (I Do It For The Money)” (1976). For the latter project, he took inspiration from headings in the Yellow Pages and documented professions ranging from Accountant to Veterinarian. Although the shag rugs, bouffant hairdos, and wide lapels of the 1970s may seem foreign to viewers today, Owens’s photographs encourage us to reflect on the routines of ordinary life, and to question just how much it has changed— or if it has at all.

 

This exhibition of works from the permanent collection includes selections from the recent acquisition of 40 photographs given by Robert Harshorn Shimshak and Marion brenner.

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