Howe, Graham.Paul Outerbridge: Nudi. Milan: Federico
Motta, 1996.
Howe, Graham, and G. Ray Hawkins, eds.Paul Outer-
bridge Jr.: Photographs. New York: Rizzoli, 1980; as
Paul Outerbridge Jr.: Photographs 1921–1939. London:
Thames and Hudson, 1980.
Outerbridge, Paul.Photographing in Color. New York:
Random House, 1940.BILL OWENS
American
Bill Owens’s photographs consist largely of portrai-
ture of middle class Americans living on the west
coast during the late twentieth century. He spotlights
anonymous individuals in casual, real-life activities
through the use of formally advanced, largely black-
and-white, photographs. His work is a significant
contribution to portrait, documentary, and lifestyle
photography of the late twentieth century.
Owens was born in California and raised in a
rural area in the northern region of the state. He
was interested in photography at an early age, but
did not react well to formal training; as a result, he
is largely self-taught. Following college, where he
had explored poetry, he married and left California
with his wife to serve in the Peace Corps in Jamaica.
Upon returning to California three years later, he
studied photography briefly at San Francisco State
University and worked as a photographer for a
local newspaper, theLivermore Independent.
Owens’s newspaper work satisfied his interest in
reality as a subject matter. His documentary photo-
graphs recorded diverse subjects and locations, tak-
ing particular note of the increase in suburban areas
and the accompanying rise in the suburban lifestyle.
Not only were natural, undeveloped spaces being
taken over by planned building projects, but mate-
rialism and the pursuit of the American dream was
dominating the lifestyle of the mainstream.
Owens’s most accomplished work, Suburbia
(1972), best known in its book form, was begun with
a grant to photograph citizens of his community in
and around Livermore. The project began in the late
1960s with Owens creating a shooting script for a
series of events that he felt characterized suburban
life: Tupperware parties, parades, and forms of casual
recreation. He also documented many of his neigh-
bors posing with what they deemed their most valued
possessions, such as cars, motor homes, or furniture.
The result was an informal anthropological–sociolo-
gical collection of beautifully shot and printed images
of individuals displaying sincere pride in their
families, homes, possessions, and community rituals.
TheSuburbiaphotographs are formally refined,
precisely focused, and generally display over-all,
blanket lighting. Many were shot in black and white
and feature balanced, straightforward compositions,
especially shots of centrally positioned, smiling indi-
viduals. Occasionally Owens shot from odd angles
and distances that added an unsettling perspective on
seemingly ordinary suburban life. For example, a
close-up on a pantry that overflows with preserved
and canned food seems to be using the formal prop-
erties of the photograph to suggest the shocking
confrontational view one obtains when opening a
cabinet, which becomes intensified by excessive con-
tents. Owens also employs color for certain images.
His images of a kitchen and party are intensified by
the use of color, as is one of a child in a costume.
Walker Evans was an important predecessor to
Owens. Like Evans, Owens captures the domestic
and social life of America. Another important precur-
sor is Robert Frank, whose ‘‘road’’ photographs cap-
tured individuals in surroundings that indicated their
backgrounds and social standing while simulta-
neously making them iconic Americans. Within the
genre of portrait photography, Owens has numerous
contemporaries such as Bruce Davidson, Danny
Lyon, and Garry Winogrand. Winogrand’s images
of middle class Texans have particular resonance.
Owens can be considered with Davidson, Lyons,
and Winogrand as part of a movement of social realist
photography that had particularly currency in the
1960s and 1970s in America.
What sets Owens’ work apart, however, is that he
interviewed his sitters and combined his images with
his subjects’ own words, creating layers of meaning
not commonly available in documentary photogra-
phy. Many of these captions reveal quotidian truthsOUTERBRIDGE JR., PAUL