Happy Birthday, USA

Parade your Independence, suburban style.

This photograph, taken by Bill Owens, captures a spirited Independence Day parade.

In the mid-1960s, Bill Owens was a photographer for a small California newspaper. Because he studied anthropology and admired documentary photographs taken for the U.S. government in the 1940s, Owens considered himself a photo-anthropologist. When newspaper photo assignments no longer interested him, Owens began documenting the suburban middle-class lifestyle in his town of Livermore, California, in earnest—parades, beauty pageants, and people taking out their trash. This photograph celebrating the high-flying spirit of an Independence Day celebration comes from Owens's classic 1972 photo essay titled Suburbia.

To enjoy other all-American landscapes—as well as those from Canada and Mexico—visit our virtual exhibition Panoramas: The North American Landscape in Art.

Pictured: Bill Owens, born 1938, Fourth of July Parade (from the book, Suburbia), 1972, gelatin silver print on paper mounted on paperboard, 8 1/2 x 6 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the National Endowment for the Arts.