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At Home in the Modern World

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Without ever having designed a building, photographer Julius Shulman forever shaped the way we see the mid-century architecture of Southern California. The City of Angels, styled and framed by Shulman, became, and remains, a testament to the modern movement. Some of the buildings endure and others have long been demolished, but they are forever preserved for posterity.

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(The book's cover) Looking out to Hollywood from Frank Lloyd Wright's Freeman House in 1953.

This monograph, which chronicles Shulman's work from the 1930s onward, contains iconic domestic shots—from Pierre Koenig's Case Study House 22 to John Lautner's Chemoshpere—that depict an impeccably picturesque tableau of, if not the way we lived then, the way of living Shulman wanted us to believe was real. However, there's also a wealth of lesser-known and never-before-published pictures that depict a different kind of town: dusty, deserted, largely in progress and under construction. The dichotomy is striking and shows the breadth of both the location and the man himself.

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(left) Pigeon Hole Parking, Kenneth Lind, downtown Los Angeles, 1954. (right) Parking lot for the May Company department store, Los Angeles, 1953.

In the words of his daughter Judy McKee, the "optimism and wonder" of Shulman's approach, "[amplified] his mythology of Los Angeles as a city where anything was possible." As the city itself developed, so too did Shulman's images, which documented this evolution at a fertile peak.

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(left) Fern Drive School, Fullerton, 1956. (right) Obeying the modest dress code at the Convent of Good Shepherd gym, Los Angeles, 1955.

Through his viewfinder, Shulman didn't merely capture these moments, he created them. Decades later, we're able to page through this visual history, admiring the true romance that lies within the gradients of his now-nostalgic black-and-whites.

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(left) Charles Eames's Herman Miller showroom in Los Angeles, 1950. (right) Jet age signage of Thrifty Drugs, A. C. Martin & Associates, Los Angeles, 1953.

 Los Angeles: The Birth of A Modern Metropolis
By Julius Schulman
Rizzoli NY, $60
rizzoliusa.com

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