Bill (Elmo) Owens

(b San Jose, CA, 25 Sept 1938). American photographer. He gained a BA at Chico State College, CA (1963), and from 1968 to 1978 he was a photojournalist for the Livermore Independent. His photographs of middle-class life coupled with the subjects' words were published as Suburbia (San Francisco, 1973). Two sequels, Our Kind of People: American Groups and Rituals (1975) and Working: I Do It for the Money (San Francisco, 1977), followed similar documentary form. He received four National Endowment for the Arts Grants and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He also produced Documentary Photography: A Personal View (Danbury, NH, 1978) and Publish your Photo Book: A Guide to Self-publishing (Livermore, 1979). In 1983 he retired to operate a brewpub in Hayward, CA.

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Owens, Bill (b. 1938), American social realist photographer raised in rural California. Owens discovered photography while in Jamaica with the Peace Corps and subsequently studied visual anthropology; he later became staff photographer for the Livermore Independent. Alongside his photojournalism, he produced a body of work documenting friends and neighbours engaged in stereotypically suburban activities. Despite publishing three books and having numerous exhibitions, he failed to find financial stability, and so in 1982 sold his equipment to open a brewpub and publish American Brewer Magazine. Revived interest in his work later allowed him to return to photography.

— Molly Rogers

Bibliography

• Owens, B., Suburbia (1999)