It's Just a Job: Bill Owens and Studs Terkel on Working in 1970s America

Drawn to the topic of employment because of its primary importance to the lives of ordinary people, California-based photographer Bill Owens and pioneering oral historian Studs Terkel began book projects in the 1970s focused on working life in the United States. Although these projects differed in geographical scope and in their instruments of investigation—Terkel traveled the country with his signature tape recorder, while Owens focused his camera on the working people of California’s Bay Area and Los Angeles—both men sought insight into the era’s zeitgeist through candid portraits of its secretaries, factory workers, and insurance agents. The themes that run through their work, including workplace discrimination based on race and gender and employment instability in the wake of globalization, remain remarkably relevant today.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.