Julius Shulman

Julius Shulman has been carefully observing Los Angeles for more than seven decades. His rise as an acclaimed architectural photographer began in 1936 the day he met Richard Neutra and saw his very first modern home: the just-finished Kun House in Hollywood. It was then, and remains, a gleaming monument to minimal design and the SoCal dream. What followed for Shulman has been a long career that coincided with the rise of L.A. as a center for forward-looking living and design.

Now 97, Shulman is still making photographs (with the help of his much-younger collaborator, Juergen Nogai) of structures new and old, taking assignments from Condé Nast and elsewhere, forever interested in capturing their interaction with the environment. He lives and works in an original steel-framed house in Laurel Canyon built in 1947 by his friend Raphael Soriano (a pupil of Neutra), and still has no plans for renovations. The home is listed as a Los Angeles landmark.

“I can’t tear the house down without a note from the city,” says Shulman. “That’s OK.”

Shulman’s decades of work has been

acquired by the Getty Center, and he is very active lecturing on photography and architecture. He is to be honored tonight (January 10) at the opening reception for photo l.a., the annual exposition of photography, which has moved this year to the Barker Hangar at the Santa Monica Airport.

–Steve Appleford

CityBeat: You’re still working.

Julius Shulman: Yeah. In 1980, I began to shy away from working. Also, I didn’t like what was going on with architecture at the time. Most young architects began to experiment with shapes and forms in architecture, hoping to create something new. Their kind of architecture didn’t prevail very long. The public didn’t like what they had done, and I had started resisting photographing it. But then I became busy with my books. And I then continued taking assignments. I also met a young man, Juergen Nogai – he’s an architect who came here from Germany. We became good friends and we’ve been working now for eight years.

So the Kun House was the first modern house you’d seen. What was your reaction at that time?

I was intrigued by it. Visually. I took six photographs, walking around the house while the architect was working with the contractors. It was just being finished, so he had something he had to discuss with the builder. So I took the photographs, processed the pictures that week.

Why did you connect with that kind of architecture?

I just saw it as a house. And I was blessed apparently with the ability to make good compositions of architecture. In this case, a very unusual, modern house. Some of those pictures are still being published in architectural books.

So I had no reaction. I didn’t have anything I was looking for. People would say “What were you looking for?” I would say “Nothing.” I didn’t know anything about architecture. I knew little about photography.

At a certain point, you developed your own interest in architecture. And you stayed with architectural photography.

I never thought of becoming an architect, thank goodness. I met the modern architects. Everyone was beginning their career, these young architects: [Rudolf] Schindler, Gregory Ain, Harwell Harris, [Raphael] Soriano. I got to know the architects personally. I was able to make good compositions of their work. I was in right place and the right time. What can I lose?

What was special going on in architecture in this part of the world? What was it that made people want to see these pictures?

During the war years, there was very little architecture going on. I got out of the Army in October 1945. As soon as I got back home, people heard I was back home again, and they started calling me. There weren’t that many architectural photographers in those days, There must have been five or six up us around the whole country.

Was modern architecture accepted by the public right away?

No, it wasn’t for several years. Modern architecture is minimal. To begin with, most people didn’t have the money to build a house in the post-Depression years.

But it appeared in magazines, which was very attractive and low-cost. In the early years, you could get a house for $10-to-$12,000. They had good architects doing them. They were all pioneer houses. When they were published in magazines, the houses didn’t look lived in! They didn’t have money for accessories. Modern furniture was not abundant in those years. You bought what you could, what you could afford. So the early people who built modern houses, they were pioneers.

Did people soon like the minimalist, modern look?

Apparently so, because five or six architects were practicing at the time. In the early years, they were all busy. Not making a lot of money – no one made a lot of money.

Those were the minimal years. These early the architects, many of them worked out of their homes. They didn’t have an office, just a little draftsman board, T-squares and triangle. These were pioneer architects. Those that stay with it, they made out all right. They made a living – as I did as a photographer. We were wise enough to know that in this kind of work, you were not going to be a big commercial entrepreneur in photography or architecture.

One of your most famous pictures is “Case Study #22.” Was that at the time recognized as a special or was it when looking back?

No. It became known as “the picture of two girls” – that’s what people called it. It has been published in every architectural magazine and book throughout the world. I took the picture in July 1960. The architectural editor of The New York Times did a huge story about me – in the middle-’60s – and it sort of triggered a greater wave of attraction. He wrote that it expressed what it was like living in the hills, “even for those of us here in New York City who don’t have any hills.” Magazine people picked it up.

There’s talk about living green and building for the environment. It seems that a lot of things that you photographed were already leaning in that direction.

I’m so glad you said that. I’ve been photographing green all my life. I always recognized the environment. [Many] pictures I have register both the interiors and the exteriors. I’ve had the feeling from the beginning that’s one of the reasons why I became successful. I was good at it.

So the architects that you worked with were more aware of the environment than others?

Well, they learned.

In photography circles, there is a certain audience for Cartier-Bresson, another audience that likes Richard Avedon photographs. What kind of people are drawn to in your pictures?

Everyone lives in a house. If they don’t have a modern house, they wish they could.

Several of your photographs outlived the structures that are in the photographs.

That is commonplace.

How do you feel about that?

This is a blessing that we have preserved houses by our photography. But also it helps when someone wants to tear a house down. People opposed to that have used my photographs as a plea and a hearing with the heritage board of the city – it shows exactly: here’s the house. I work with preservation people all the time. I’m known for encouraging people to think twice before tearing a house down. This kind of photography is a good instrument for preservation.

The cultural heritage board called me in the ’50s to photograph the traditional early, early houses around Los Angeles done in the 1880s through the early 1900s. They became monuments.

During World War II, when you were in the Army, you were a surgical photographer?

When I got in the Army, I was stationed in Florence, Arizona, because I was subject to reassignment. I was at that time 33 years old, and they didn’t know quite where to put me. It turns out that the 9th Service Command in Salt Lake City requested to the proper agencies that a new Army hospital open up in Spokane, Wash., specializing in surgery. So I was assigned to go there. I was a private in those years. So I became a photographer in surgery. For two years it was a beautiful experience. I really enjoyed it. I got to know all the doctors and collaborated with them. They pointed what they wanted to photograph, and open heart surgery. It was a beautiful education for me. I got out of the Army in October 1945, and went back to photographing architecture.

You’ve established a very close relationship with the Getty, where your archive is now housed. Was that an important thing for you?

Changed my whole life, two and half years ago. They’re enlarging their photographic department. They turned to me to allow Getty to acquire my archives. Of course I said yes. They spent three days with a crew, and trucks coming up here, cleaning out everything. People used to say to me: “Doesn’t it bother you to see 70 years of work going out the front door?” I say, no. I know it’s being it’s being put in a good place.

You’re 97?

It’s a nice feeling. One of the reasons I’m in good shape is that when I was in high school, I was on the track team. I ran the half-mile. Also, I was on the gymnastic team. I still have my triceps muscles. I’m still in good shape. They can’t keep up with me.

Is there a lot of longevity in your family?

I’m the only one left of five children. My mother died at the age of 87. My brothers and sisters died young. They were business people. The read the stock market report every day – ups and downs. The stock market was holy. I never bought a share of anything. My wife and I bought bonds. We made a lot of money.

So you avoided all that stress?

I don’t have any stress at all. If you can’t pay cash, it means you’re not ready for it. I never had a mortgage. I count my blessings.

Photo l.a. 2008 is open Friday, January 11 and Saturday, January 12, noon to 8:00 p.m.; Sunday, January 13, noon to 6:00 p.m.. The reception for Julius Shulman is Thursday at 6 p.m. A conversation with Shulman and Wim DeWit is on Sunday, 1 p.m., at Ruskin Group Theatre Co. Info: artfairsinc.com.