A Constructed View: The Architectural Photography of Julius Shulman

Julius Shulman, one of the great masters of modern architectural photography, is the preeminent recorder of early California modernism. By 1927 when he was sixteen, Shulman was already using the family Brownie box camera to document his Southern California surroundings and experiences; in 1936, his professional career was launched when he sent Richard Neutra some uncommissioned photographs of the architect's Kun House. Shulman went on to document the famous Case Study House Program (architects included Charles and Ray Eames, Pierre Koenig, and Eero Saarinen) and also the architecture of the 1930s through the 1980s, especially that of Southern California, but also country- and worldwide. His subjects included the buildings of R.M. Schindler, John Lautner, Raphael Soriano, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe, and Oscar Niemeyer, among many others. Through his work, Shulman defined the image of Los Angeles and framed the architecture of the time for a global audience. In addition to an overview of Shulman's career and photographic oeuvre, this book emphasizes Shulman's method of "constructing" photographic views. These constructions, which complemented his innate ability to compose striking photographs often transcend reality to capture the spirit, time and place of a work of architecture. An analysis of architecture's visual presentation examines not only the media of the era - John Entenza's Arts & Architecture, for instance - but also the work of Shulman's photographic contemporaries.