사회적 다큐멘터리로서의 빌 오웬스 작품의 사진사적 의미에 관한 연구 - 작품집 <교외생활(Suburbia)>을 중심으로 -

Abstract

Abstract Bill Owens has spent years documenting life in suburbia and published his works in his book <Suburbia>. He focused on the working lives of the Americans who live there, capturing their pride with a sense of humor that rises above the pettiness of simple snobbery. Where some critics have associated Owens' work with the New Topographics school of photography that emerged in the 1970s which attended to the "social landscape" and presented the artifacts and architectures of middle and late twentieth century industrialized cultures, others have placed Owens within the documentary tradition of Diane Arbus, Walker Evans and Weegee. Most of critics attribute merits of his works to the ability to capture the understated abnormality that lies beneath the everyday rituals of American life. His diagnostic ability to spot sore points in the domestic landscape underscores both nostalgia for and anxiety about the constant threat to middle class security. Recently his works are newly reviewed in aesthetical and historical aspects of contemporary photography. This thesis tries to examine his works both in terms of historical aspects in the tradition of documentary photography, and their influence on the contemporary photography in the postmodern era.