The Auto as King

The Auto as King

Bill Owens celebrates the rides of East Bay suburbia.

Photographer Bill Owens’ 1973 book Suburbia, an intimate chronicling of the everyday lives of freshly minted Livermore-area suburbanites, caused quite a stir in the art and documentary photography world. Other books followed, but by the early 1980s, Owens had a new passion: brewing beer. He opened one of California’s first brewpubs, Buffalo Bill’s, in downtown Hayward. He has also sold antiques and currently heads up the American Distilling Institute, a trade organization for craft-spirit makers. But the Hayward resident never completely lost touch with photography. With the help of a local photo gallery, Owens has unearthed another treasure, Cars. This book compliments Suburbia by documenting the cars of 1970s suburban dwellers. These are not pristine show cars; they are lovingly maintained daily drives. They are pure Detroit iron from the late ’40s all the way to the mid-’70s —an era when the American auto was king. I called Owens recently to see what gets his motor running.

Paul Kilduff: How did your new book Cars get revived?

Bill Owens: There’s this little gallery here in town called PhotoCentral. I finally got acquainted with them. It’s a husband-and-wife team. They said, ‘You got anything else?’ I said, ‘I think I’ve got a box of stuff from when I worked on this car book.’ We pulled out this box that had been stored away for 37 years. Crown Books killed the book, so I’m just sitting on all of these negatives and stuff. We start looking and oh, my God, it’s a gold mine. What’s really cool about these shots is they had that Bill Owens look. The angles and the composition are there. I meet a lot of young photographers and people interested in art. I say, ‘You don’t understand composition. Go study composition. There’s ratios. There’s angles. Look at Grandma Moses. Look at Vincent van Gogh. Look at all of these things. Study art and understand composition.’ These cars have that composition. I took them and put them in different settings. I put them in front of old movie theaters; in front of apartments; in front of K-Mart. You suddenly can identify where the photographs were taken. The image of the car is eye appealing. You touch that button and everybody has a story to tell. When I was in college, I had a ’53 Chevy, two-door, Bel-Air hardtop.

PK: Whoa.

BO: Not only that, we ‘raked’ it so the front of the car went down about 3 inches. When you’re going down the road, you look like you’re going faster, because the car has been raked.

PK: Do you go over the speed limit much?

BO: My attitude about speeding is if the police can catch me, give me a damn ticket. I don’t care. I just try to keep up with the mainstream of the freeway. You’ve got to be doing 75 miles an hour to do that.

PK: Quite possibly, yeah.

BO: What do you mean, quite possibly? You don’t drive on the freeway?

PK: I’m kind of a slowpoke, Bill.

BO: Not me. I’m right there. I’ve got things to do.

PK: I don’t doubt it. You’re a go-getter. I mean, how did you even scrape together the time to put Cars out?

BO: Well, I didn’t do anything. PhotoCentral did it all.

PK: I’ve heard car guys and others lament that while today’s wind-tunnel designed cars are much more aerodynamic and thus fuel efficient, they kind of all look the same. I mean, I can’t really tell a Honda Accord from a Toyota Camry from a whatever.

BO: Me either. I don’t think that’s the issue. That’s just necessary for the gas mileage and everything else.

PK: Right. But, my greater point is it doesn’t seem like anyone’s going to be taking a nostalgic look back at today’s cars, like you bothered to do all those years ago with Cars. There are a few notable exceptions, but it seems like today’s cars are more like appliances. Do you agree with that?

BO: I think that’s true. Times have changed. That’s all.

PK: I have a 14-year-old. She sort of wants to drive, but it’s not really a big thing for her.

BO: All of us were driving by the time we were 15.

PK: Part of that’s living in a crowded city, but I also think part of it is there is no romance associated with driving anymore. The streets are so clogged with traffic all the time now that it just seems like a chore. Bring on the driverless car. I’ll be in the back seat on my iPad mini.

BO: No, I think you’re wrong about that. I think that the romance of cars has spread worldwide to China. Everybody likes to own and operate a car. Our love affair with the car is here to stay.

PK: You don’t think it’s just evolved into something else then?

BO: No. There’s more cars out there. The electric car. What’s that car that’s $120,000?

PK: The Tesla?

BO: Yeah. Look at that sucker. Look at the American love affair with that one.

PK: I will grant you that the full-size one is a beaut. Definitely. The little sports car is not too shabby, either. What I’m saying, though, is that there are some stunningly beautiful cars available today, but each make of car does not have a signature look like they did in the past.

BO: You’re too old for that. I’m sorry. My kids can still rattle off the cars. They’re boys. If you had a son it would be different. Girls? No. They’re more interested in tennis shoes.

PK: Are cars still really the most important part of living in suburbia? I mean, having one is an absolute necessity, right?

BO: It’s worse now. Everybody has three cars. Mom has a car. Dad has a car. The kid has a car. When I photographed that book, there were two cars in a family. Kids weren’t endowed with a car.

PK: Nowadays kids get their driver’s license and immediately go crossover SUV shopping.

BO: How are they going to get to the mall? Mom gets real tired of taking them to the mall.

PK: Exactly. How the heck are you going to get to the cultural center of suburbia if you don’t have a car?

BO: You have to drive a car. We’ve got to buy you an old Prius. Not a Prius; we’ll buy you an old Toyota.

PK: Were the shots of the cars taken all over the East Bay?

BO: From Oakland to Livermore. Maybe one or two in Walnut Creek, but it was all pretty local.

PK: Are you still in touch with any of the owners of the cars?

BO: No. Who are you in touch with after 37 years? Nobody.

PK: Well, as I recall, you still know some of the people featured in Suburbia.

BO: One or two, but that’s about it. Most of them are dead by now. I’m alive.

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Cars is an on-demand book published by PhotoCental Gallery. To order a copy, visit www.PhotoCentral.org.

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Bill Owens Vital Stats

Age: 76

Birthplace: San Jose

Astrological Sign: Libra

Book Favorite drink: Whiskey with a splash of water

Motto: Onwards.

Website: www.BillOwens.com

Faces of the East Bay