Biography
Owens was born in San Jose, California. In 1973, he released the photographic book Suburbia, whose pictures showed American suburban life in the town of Livermore, where he lived at the time. The Los Angeles Times commented that the book “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.” In 2001, Suburbia was included in Andrew Roth’s THE BOOK OF 101 BOOKS: Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century.
He has published other photographic books, and his photographs have been exhibited internationally and are in many 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, San Jose Museum of Art and the 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 brewpubs to open in California since prohibition.
Read more about this topic: Bill Owens (photographer)
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