Julius Behind the Lens, 1938. (© Craig Krull Gallery, Santa Monica, Julius Shulman Los Angeles: The Birth of a Modern Metropolis by Sam Lubell and Douglas Woods, Rizzoli New York, 2011.) “Julius Shulman’s log book shows that he was a classic workaholic,” said Sam Lubell. “He shot constantly, doing every type of assignment you could think of. Aside from famous architectural icons he shot construction sites, advertisements, downtown images for the Redevelopment Agency, pictures for every type of corporation, architectural models, celebrity shots, and on and on. He loved exploring the city and he rarely turned down a job. He was a legendary character in L.A. Julius was very approachable and charming, and is well known for welcoming everybody at his house in the Hollywood Hills. His amazing connections in L.A., along with his talent, are what really separated him from other architectural photographers. But at the same time he had a legendary temper and was known for saying what he thought, good and bad. There was nobody like Julius. He was really an L.A. institution.”
Looking Over Griffith Observatory and Los Angeles From Mount Hollywood, 1936. (© Craig Krull Gallery, Santa Monica, Julius Shulman Los Angeles: The Birth of a Modern Metropolis by Sam Lubell and Douglas Woods, Rizzoli New York, 2011.) This photograph was taken in 1936, a year after the Griffith Observatory had opened, bringing scientific advancement to a publicly accessible peak in Griffith Park. The eclectic Art Deco complex, designed by architects John C. Austin and Frederick M. Ashley, was a successful Depression-era collaboration between an influential educational institution (the California Institute of Technology) and the public sector. It remains one of the city’s most important landmarks and was exhaustively rehabilitated and reopened in 2006. Lubell noted that this photograph “shows Shulman’s ability to capture the essence of any scene.” And yet despite such awe-inspiring representations of Los Angeles’ potential, eventually Shulman would become disenchanted by the erosion of the city’s utopian possibilities.
Mobil Gas Station, Smith and Williams, Anaheim, 1956. (© J. Paul Getty Trust, Julius Shulman Los Angeles: The Birth of a Modern Metropolis by Sam Lubell and Douglas Woods, Rizzoli New York, 2011.) Like many street photographers, Shulman didn’t maintain a hierarchy of building types. Gas stations were a significant part of the American landscape, and had particular importance in Southern California, where the automobile shaped the region’s growth and development. “Modernism had not been co-opted by the rich,” said Lubell. “It was a movement that still believed that the possibilities of technology could bring happiness to everyone.” Here Shulman took the elements of a service station and aligned the structure, signage, and equipment into a striking composition.
Richard Neutra’s Kun House, 1936; Shulman’s first photograph of modern architecture. (© Craig Krull Gallery, Santa Monica, Julius Shulman Los Angeles: The Birth of a Modern Metropolis by Sam Lubell and Douglas Woods, Rizzoli New York, 2011.) Photographing the Kun House on a whim brought Shulman into contact with the modern movement in architecture and led him to architects Richard Neutra and Raphael Soriano, at that time Neutra’s apprentice. “Richard Neutra took Shulman under his wing and was really the one who made his career,” said Lubell. “In turn, Shulman’s pictures are what really mythologized Neutra. This house marks the beginning of that relationship and of Shulman’s career.” Shulman documented most of Neutra’s significant works, including the Kaufmann House in Palm Springs, which was built by Edgar J. Kaufmann, the Jewish department-store owner from Pittsburgh who had previously commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to build Fallingwater in Bear Run, Pa.
A View of the Biltmore Hotel, Schultze and Weaver, Downtown Los Angeles, 1959. (© J. Paul Getty Trust, Julius Shulman Los Angeles: The Birth of a Modern Metropolis by Sam Lubell and Douglas Woods, Rizzoli New York, 2011.) The Biltmore Hotel is the Mediterranean Revival/Beaux Arts grand dame of downtown Los Angeles hotels. Designed by New York-based firm Shultze & Weaver, who were responsible for several landmark U.S. hotels, including the Waldorf Astoria in New York City and the Breakers in Palm Beach, Fla., the Biltmore remains mostly as it was when it was built in 1923. Yet the surroundings have changed. The driveway at the front of the frame leads to the Pershing Square parking garage, which was carved out of a park and signaled the city’s flagging commitment to public spaces. “As with his residential shots, Shulman also framed this shot with leaves in the foreground, likely held by an assistant or even an architect,” Lubell said.
CBS Television Studios Located Next to the Old Farmer’s Market, Pereira & Luckman, 1952. (© J. Paul Getty Trust, Julius Shulman Los Angeles: The Birth of a Modern Metropolis by Sam Lubell and Douglas Woods, Rizzoli New York, 2011.) CBS Television City opened at the intersection of Fairfax Avenue and Beverly Boulevard in a neighborhood that soon filled with delis and Jewish bakeries as Jews migrated west from their former community of Boyle Heights, where Shulman grew up and attended Roosevelt High School. The expanses of concrete and stark modernist landscape design surrounding the state-of-the-art production facility, plus the quaint rusticity of the adjacent Original Farmers Market, stood in contrast to the relatively dense surrounding residential and commercial area. Shulman brings out the modern charm in what is essentially an imposing, inhospitable bunker-like structure.
Interior View at the Los Angeles International Airport, 1963. (© J. Paul Getty Trust, Julius Shulman Los Angeles: The Birth of a Modern Metropolis by Sam Lubell and Douglas Woods, Rizzoli New York, 2011.) The stylish stewardesses and pilot captured Shulman’s attention in this 1963 image, and yet the inanimate objects still have a local significance of their own. The molded plastic shell seating helped put the Venice-based studio of designers Ray and Charles Eames on the map. The couple became acclaimed industrial designers, creative visionaries whose work was known for its practical applications as well as its experimental eccentricities. The Eames’ tandem sling seating became another fixture of airport interiors, and Shulman also photographed their landmark home (Case Study House No. 8) in the Pacific Palisades.
Julius Shulman’s Home designed by Raphael Soriano, 1951. (© J. Paul Getty Trust, Julius Shulman Los Angeles: The Birth of a Modern Metropolis by Sam Lubell and Douglas Woods, Rizzoli New York, 2011.) In 1936, Shulman delivered prints of the Kun House to Neutra’s associate Raphael Soriano at the site of a house that Soriano was designing in the Silver Lake neighborhood. Soriano asked Shulman to photograph that house when it was completed, and, as Shulman wrote, “Our friendship continued during the ensuing years when I photographed all of his projects.” Soriano later designed Shulman’s home and studio, which included many hallmarks of midcentury modernism: sheets of floor-to-ceiling glass, Roman brick, visible steel beams, flat rooflines. “The rectilinear forms and glass boxes are meant to defer to the trees and vines and hills around,” Lubell said. Shulman filled the house with photography equipment, art, souvenirs from his travels, and other belongings that made it his own.
Drive-In Dining at the Googie-Style Tiny Naylor's, designed by Douglas Honnold at Sunset and La Brea in Hollywood, 1952. (© J. Paul Getty Trust, Julius Shulman Los Angeles: The Birth of a Modern Metropolis by Sam Lubell and Douglas Woods, Rizzoli New York, 2011.) Populist architecture that took cues from space-age design mixed with heavy doses of whimsy became the lingua franca of coffee shops, bowling alleys, and other casual establishments. The style came to be known as “Googie,” first named for the John Lautner-designed Googie's coffee shop in West Hollywood. Despite being located at a busy Hollywood intersection, this branch of the Tiny Naylor’s chain used an automobile-friendly design to facilitate a more typically suburban ritual. Shulman directed his lens at all types of retail settings, from grocery stores to movie theaters, as their forms and functions changed with the times. “His vision was as much cinematic as it was architectural,” Lubell said.
Compton College, 1953. (© J. Paul Getty Trust, Julius Shulman Los Angeles: The Birth of a Modern Metropolis by Sam Lubell and Douglas Woods, Rizzoli New York, 2011.) Los Angeles neighborhoods like Compton occupy a very different place in the public consciousness today, but in 1953, it was predominantly white and Christian. This image of young students hints at the optimism found in the suburbs and community colleges that were increasingly available after World War II. (Shulman attended UCLA and Berkeley.) The sign’s modernist style suggests a new collective confidence, too.
