Suburbia

Lawns, driveways, tract houses and the private dramas of suburban life, as seen by photographers and painters since the 1950s.

No works indexed yet · 10 related artists

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About

The mass-built suburbs that spread after the Second World War gave artists a new landscape of lawns, driveways and repeated houses. Dan Graham's Homes for America (1966–67), laid out as a magazine article, paired snapshots of identical tract homes with lists of their standard models and colours. Bill Owens photographed his neighbours around Livermore, California, for the book Suburbia (1973), adding their own words as captions about barbecues, Tupperware parties and new cars.

Painters and photographers have also looked behind the picture windows. Eric Fischl's canvases of the early 1980s stage uneasy family dramas beside pools and in bedrooms, and Larry Sultan photographed his parents in their San Fernando Valley home for Pictures from Home (1992). Gregory Crewdson lights ordinary streets like film sets for moments of quiet strangeness. In England, George Shaw paints the Coventry council estate where he grew up, using the enamel paint sold for model kits.