VISUAL ARTS
BY ESTER BARKAI
to visit with arts editor Bob Keefer. I had been writing for
the paper about a half a year but had not yet been to the EW
building, and I was curious to see what a newspaper in the
electronic age looked like. Keefer is a photographer, and we
started talking photography — which led me to mention that
I was in a photograph archived at the Smithsonian.
Next thing I knew I was being asked to contact Owens
about it. I thought it was a long shot, because Owens and I
had never been introduced, and he had no idea who I was.
But I emailed him at the address on his website and re-
ceived an immediate response. By chance he was coming
up through Oregon on his way to Washington and would be
in Eugene — the following day.
I wasn’t supposed to be in the
photograph that would be later
entitled Garment District,
Los Angeles, but it was raining that
night and my hair was wet.
It was when I was brushing it in the
women’s room that Owens noticed me
and asked me to step into his picture.
MEETING BILL OWENS —
37 YEARS AFTER COCAINE
The famous photographer drops by Eugene and catches up with a former subject
he first time I met photographer Bill Owens was
in 1980 in the women’s bathroom. I was 21. We
were in the building where I worked, which was at
a fashion publication in downtown Los Angeles. It
wasn’t out of the ordinary to see a fashion shoot at
work — but this wasn’t that.
Owens was one of a big handful of artists chosen to
work on the Los Angeles Documentary Project, and he was
at our office to take a photograph for his series on clichés
about L.A.
By 1980, Owens was an admired artist and social com-
mentator. I didn’t know this at the time, but my coworker
and friend did, and she wanted to be in one of his pictures.
We were going out that night but she said she had to stop first
at work. It wouldn’t take long, she said.
I wasn’t supposed to be in the photograph that would
be later entitled Garment District, Los Angeles, but it was
raining that night and my hair was wet. It was when I was
brushing it in the women’s room that Owens noticed me
and asked me to step into his picture.
Years later in a college art history class, I learned who
Bill Owens was. My professor explained that Owens’ 1973
book Suburbia documents the post-World War II migration
from cities to the outskirts and portrays that moment when
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the American dream of home ownership became a reality.
If you go to BillOwens.com, you’ll notice he explains it
differently: “This book is about my friends and the world
they live in.”
Owens spent many years working as a photographer
for a newspaper, and his background in photojournalism
informs his own projects. He often includes a brief descrip-
tion along with a photograph, as newspapers tend to do. In
Suburbia, for example, we see a picture of a small boy on
a Big Wheel bike holding a toy gun. The caption reads, in
part, “I don’t feel that Richie playing with guns will have a
negative effect on his personality …” The statement is ob-
viously a quote, but Owens’ choice to include it next to the
image leads the viewer’s mind toward social commentary.
The Portland Art Museum recently acquired some of
Owens’ work from the early 1970s. Kitchen Drawer (1971)
is available for viewing in their online collection. The draw-
er in the photograph is open so we can see what it contains.
The image could stand for Owens’ work as a whole, looking
into places others might think not to because they are too or-
dinary, finding beauty or art in the details of average living.
Owens says he didn’t start out to make “art.” He said this
to me when we met this summer, a meeting that would not
have occurred had I not stopped by Eugene Weekly one day
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When Owens came to my house I was aware, more than
usual, of the things I had in it, things that were covered or
piled up as my husband was putting up new walls. He and
my husband spoke about distilling, as Owens is now owner
of the successful American Distilling Institute, and then
he and I went to McMenamins North Bank and sat by the
river, a far ways from L.A. and the lives we used to have,
where we split a sandwich and talked about art.
Owens says his photographs don’t “cross that bound-
ary into art.” (A number of art institutions would disagree,
such as the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Port-
land Art Museum, The Getty …)
The first time I saw the photograph pictured here, Garment
District, Los Angeles, was when Keefer looked it up online a
few days before Owens and I met formally for the first time.
When Owens and I looked at the photograph together he ad-
mired the composition, especially how the three figures form
a dynamic line across the format. And he remembered also
that he had to take the shot over because his feet were showing
underneath the stall he was standing behind.
It was part of a set of photos he shot that day in that bath-
room; I’m also in a similar photo from the shoot, titled Co-
caine, which is in the Smithsonian. And, no, I didn’t indulge.
Owens finds it interesting that this picture hasn’t re-
ceived as much attention as have some of his others. Peo-
ple don’t know what to make of it, he says. Still, he says it’s
one of his “classic images.”
When I look at the image I see myself lending my friend
the coat she’s wearing, which was a magenta leather coat
my mom gave me after she was done with it. I see the
friends I used to have working at California Apparel News,
which turned out to be the best job I’ve had working inside
a building. And then, flashing forward to the 2000s, I see
myself introducing younger generations to the photographs
of Bill Owens.
Ester Barkai writes about visual art for Eugene Weekly.
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eugeneweekly.com • October 12, 2017
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