COLLECTION NAME:
Undergraduate Thesis Collection
Record
Title:
Turmoil on the Teeter-Totter: Competing Perceptions of Childhood in Bill Owens's Suburbia
Creator:
Lyda, Shawna
Subject:
Thesis (B.F.A.) -- Art History
Subject:
Savannah College of Art and Design -- Department of Art History
Rights:
Copyright is retained by the authors or artists of items in this collection, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.
Abstract:
"Bill Owens's Suburbia, a photographic series documenting suburban American living in the 1970s, positions photographer and viewer as outsiders invited into the subjects' lives. Suburbia characterizes family life as mundane yet complex, taking childhood and parenting seriously as subjects of artistic and sociological study. Owens balances an observer's objectivity with the ability to pierce through the artificial sheen of commercialized suburban living, examining a new generation informed by increasingly complicated cultural conditions. Portraits of childhood punctuate Suburbia, from Barbie utopias and blanket forts to compulsory yard work. These seemingly docile images speak to turbulent shifts in American identity brought about by factors such as the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, and second-wave feminism. Owens's photographs signal a shift in the perception of childhood that took place over the 1960s and 1970s, which influenced the evolution of child-rearing practices. The photographs reflect private and public memory, depicting the balance between treating children as mini-adults and protecting their sacred innocence. This thesis adopts a contextual methodology to compare Suburbia to contemporary depictions of childhood in publications including TIME, Sunset, and LIFE. Relevant to Roland Barthes' definition of photography as capturing what has been, approximately fifty years have passed since Owens's mechanical lens anesthetized living moments in a Northern Californian suburb. Today, the children in Suburbia have met or surpassed their parents' age at the time of its publication in 1973. Cyclically, those who were once children themselves, molded by their zeitgeist, have now shaped their own generation. This thesis argues that Suburbia reflects a critical point in America's evolving perception of childhood and child-rearing—a transitory period resting uncomfortably between desperately wanting to shield children from the pitfalls of adulthood and needing to prepare them for the horrors innate to the modern world." --Abstract
Keywords: Bill Owens, child-rearing, contextual methodology, perceptions of childhood, photography, private and public memory, Roland Barthes, Suburbia
Keywords: Bill Owens, child-rearing, contextual methodology, perceptions of childhood, photography, private and public memory, Roland Barthes, Suburbia
Publisher:
Savannah, Georgia: Savannah College of Art and Design
Date:
2023-05
Format:
1 online resource: 1 PDF (Thesis, 65 pages, color illustrations)