Bill Owens: Working/Leisure

© All works copyright Bill Owens Archive

Bill Owens was born and raised on a farm in Northern California (“my father did construction, my mother did chickens”). In 1968 he became a staff photographer for the Livermore Independent. 

From the unlikely perch of a small-town newspaper in California’s Central Valley, Owens developed a goal and a vision that would resonate from coast to coast for many decades to come: 
his memorable snapshots of suburban California life in the 1970s stand as individual pieces in the grand puzzle that is the American Dream. 

The 72 photographs in Bill Owens: Working/Leisure – narrated in the subjects’ own words – capture Americans hard at work and equally hard at play. As writer Lewis Lapham has observed:

To look at Bill Owens’ photographs is to know wherein lies the health and safety of the American democracy. Not in the Pentagon’s nuclear arsenal, or in the Department of Homeland Security’s surveillance cameras watching over New York banks and the Washington politicians, but in the mongrel energies of an uncowed people proud of what they do and make. Homo Faber (“Working Man”), determined to build the raft of an identity and purpose on which to float the speculation of his or her life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

art2art is proud to present Working/Leisure, our second show featuring Owens’ slyly subversive photographs. This show can be combined with Bill Owens: Suburbia; please inquire.

Number of photographs: 72
Frame sizes: 14 x16 inches
Rental fee: $4900 for 8 weeks