Bill Owens (photographer)

Bill Owens (born September 25, 1938 in San José , California ) is an American photographer , also a press photographer , brewer and editor. He lives in Hayward , California, received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1976 and is a two-time National Endowment for the Arts winner. Owens is best known for his suburban photographs, which show domestic scenes from the East Bay near San Francisco . He published the photos in 1973 in his book Suburbia . According to the New York Times , “Bill Owens […] is one of the very few photographers who has taken large-scale pictures of people in the suburbs. There are a very large number of photographers who have made their reputations through urban photography and a smaller but impressive number of people who have made their name known through study in rural communities, but Mr. Owens is the only one who is recorded with pre-mortem life. Housing estates where 60 million Americans lived in the decades after World War II ".

biography

Owens was born on September 25, 1938 in San José , California . In 1973 he published the photo book Suburbia , which shows pictures of American suburban life in the city of Livemore , California, where Owens was living at the time. The Los Angeles Times writes that the book “inspires pity, contempt, laughter, and self-awareness. Owen's influence was enormous during the 1970s, particularly in the way he portrayed the middle class ”. In 2001, Suburbia was included in Andrew Roth's THE BOOK OF 101 BOOKS: Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century .

Owens also published other photo books, and his photographs have also been exhibited internationally and are present in numerous collections, including The Museum of Modern Art , Berkeley Art Museum , Los Angeles County Museum of Art , San Francisco Museum of Modern Art , Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art , the San Jose Museum of Art, and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles .

Owens is a contemporary of photographers Mary Ellen Mark , William Eggleston , Joel Sternfeld , Stephen Shore and Lee Friedlander .

Owens founded Buffalo Bill's Brewery in Hayward in 1983 , one of the first breweries in California since American Prohibition .

In 2003, Owens founded the American Distilling Institute , a professional membership organization and publishing company "promoting and defending the art and enterprise of the distilling trade." As president of ADI, Owens became a leading spokesperson for the distilling movement.

Publications

1973 Suburbia
1975 Our Kind of People: American Groups and Rituals
1977 Working: I Do It For the Money
2005 Leisure
2014 The Village: Bill Owens - Jamaica Peace Corps Photographs 1964–66 , with an introduction by Victoria Sheridan. Afterword by Geir Jordahl. Eds. Geir Jordahl, Kate Jordahl, and John Thacker

literature

The Washington Post , "The American Dream, Circa 1970: Suburbia Photographs Capture How Much We've Changed," by Frank Ahrens, March 24, 2000.
The New York Times , “A Vision of Suburban Bliss Edged With Irony,” by Jeffrey Kastner, March 19, 2000.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer : "Bill Owens' Unrelenting Eye Defines a Generation" - April 9, 1999.
The New York Sun : "The Shame of the Suburbs," by William Meyers, August 11, 2005.

Web links

Remarks

^ John Simon Guggenheim Foundation - Bill Owens. In: gf.org. Retrieved February 12, 2016 .
↑ In the original: “Bill Owens is one of the very few photographers to have shot people in the suburbs to any great extent. There is a long, long list of photographers who made their reputations shooting in cities and a shorter but impressive list who made their names with studies of rural communities, but Mr. Owens is uniquely associated with suburbanites living in the tract housing developments that absorbed 60 million Americans in the decades following World War II ".
↑ In the original: "rouses pity, contempt, laughter and self-recognition. Owens's influence was immense during the 1970s, especially in respect to the kind of portraiture that shows the middle class ”.
↑ http://www.gregkucera.com/owens.htm
↑ In the original: "to promote and defend the art and enterprise of craft distilling".
↑ About American Distilling Institute. In: American Distilling Institute. Retrieved February 9, 2015 .
↑ Jenn Garbee: Q&A With Bill Owens: The American Distilling Institute Founder's Cross-Country Road Trip, Industry Trends + His Favorite Spirit Stops. In: LA Weekly. August 28, 2012, accessed February 9, 2015 .

personal data
SURNAME	Owens, Bill
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American photographer, brewer
DATE OF BIRTH	September 25, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH	San Jose , California

[1] John Simon Guggenheim Foundation - Bill Owens. In: gf.org. Retrieved February 12, 2016 .

[2] In the original: “Bill Owens is one of the very few photographers to have shot people in the suburbs to any great extent. There is a long, long list of photographers who made their reputations shooting in cities and a shorter but impressive list who made their names with studies of rural communities, but Mr. Owens is uniquely associated with suburbanites living in the tract housing developments that absorbed 60 million Americans in the decades following World War II ".

[3] In the original: "rouses pity, contempt, laughter and self-recognition. Owens's influence was immense during the 1970s, especially in respect to the kind of portraiture that shows the middle class ”.

[4] ttp://www.gregkucera.com/owens.htm

[5] In the original: "to promote and defend the art and enterprise of craft distilling".

[6] About American Distilling Institute. In: American Distilling Institute. Retrieved February 9, 2015 .

[7] Jenn Garbee: Q&A With Bill Owens: The American Distilling Institute Founder's Cross-Country Road Trip, Industry Trends + His Favorite Spirit Stops. In: LA Weekly. August 28, 2012, accessed February 9, 2015 .