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Bill Owens
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Bill Owens, Suburbia, 1973.
Another impression of this image is included in the permanent collection of the Centre Pompidou (Inventory AM 2006-576).
Bill Owens, Suburbia, 1973.
Another impression of this image is included in the permanent collection of the Centre Pompidou (Inventory AM 2006-576).
"I Bought the Lawn" (1972) is one of the well-known images from his Suburbia series, the body of work he published as the book Suburbia in 1973, documenting the tract-house culture of Livermore, California, where he worked as a newspaper photographer at the time.
The photograph follows Owen's signature format: a plainly composed portrait of a suburban homeowner paired with a first-person caption in their own words (in this case, about having just bought the lawn) rather than an artist's caption. That documentary-plus-testimony approach, letting his subjects narrate their own domestic lives and aspirations, usually with deadpan sincerity, is what made Suburbia one of the defining photobooks about American consumer culture and the post-war suburban dream, alongside contemporaries like Robert Adams and the broader "New Topographics" moment, though Owens' work is warmer and more personal than that group's cooler landscape approach.
Bill Owens, Suburbia, 1973.
Another impression of this image is included in the permanent collection of the Centre Pompidou (Inventory AM 2006-576).
"I Bought the Lawn" (1972) is one of the well-known images from his Suburbia series, the body of work he published as the book Suburbia in 1973, documenting the tract-house culture of Livermore, California, where he worked as a newspaper photographer at the time.
The photograph follows Owen's signature format: a plainly composed portrait of a suburban homeowner paired with a first-person caption in their own words (in this case, about having just bought the lawn) rather than an artist's caption. That documentary-plus-testimony approach, letting his subjects narrate their own domestic lives and aspirations, usually with deadpan sincerity, is what made Suburbia one of the defining photobooks about American consumer culture and the post-war suburban dream, alongside contemporaries like Robert Adams and the broader "New Topographics" moment, though Owens' work is warmer and more personal than that group's cooler landscape approach.