Julius Shulman’s iconic oeuvre of architectural photography.
The mid-century modern homes of California are revered now for their engineering ingenuity and as symbols of elegance, wealth and bold confidence in all things new. That these buildings, designed in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s by architects Charles Eames, Pierre Koenig and other champions of modernism, have come to embody the California dream is thanks to how they were represented in photographs—first and foremost in the work of photographer Julius Shulman, who made his name photographing sleek, glass and steel homes.
Shulman enrolled in the University of California, as an engineering student in 1929 but ended up dropping out. A self-taught photographer his first big break came when a friend, who was working as an assistant to Richard Neutra, showed the architect some images Shulman had taken of Neutra’s Kun Residence in Los Angeles. Neutra liked the photographs so much he asked Shulman to photograph more of his designs. By 1950, Shulman had so many commissions from architects and publications that he was able to open his own studio in Los Angeles.
What set Shulman apart from other photographers was his ability to humanize the clean, sharp lines of modernist architecture, which at one time was perceived as alien and even uninhabitable. Known for working with black-and-white infrared film, which deepened the depths and contrasts of the angular structures he captured, Shulman often inserted signs of ideal domesticity—women lounging by a pool, children riding bikes, couples sipping cocktails—into his images as a way of aestheticizing modern living.
Shulman’s most iconic image is “Case Study House No. 22” (1960). The photograph reveals two women in cocktail dresses in the corner of a glass-walled home, designed by architect Pierre Koenig, that juts out over a cityscape of Los Angeles. Like the streetlights below them, they appear to dangle above the buildings of the Los Angeles skyline. This image was created outside of architect Pierre Koenig’s Stahl House. The image, so surreal, is equally convincing as a relic of the past or a vision of the future.
Shulman went on to photograph 18 of the 26 “Case Study” houses, commissioned by Art & Architecture magazine to meet the needs of America’s postwar housing boom in the 1950s. His archive of over 260,000 vintage and modern prints, negatives and transparencies is currently housed in the Getty Center at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
If you are able to conjure an image of a mid-century modern home, it is likely because you have seen the architectural style masterfully depicted in Shulman’s work. As Neutra once said, “His work will survive me. Film is stronger, and good glossy prints are easier to ship than brute concrete, stainless steel or even ideas.”
By Brienne Walsh
Read more stories from the full issue of PDNedu Fall 2019 here.
from PDNedu https://ift.tt/2Mqs0fI
via IFTTT
0 comments:
Post a Comment