Julius Shulman

(American, 1910–2009)

Julius Shulman was an American photographer known for his comprehensive documentation of Mid-Century Modern architecture and urban development in Los Angeles. The artist captured the idyllic spirit of the postwar building-boom era in his photographs of modern domesticity, sometimes including the inhabitants of the homes in his shots—and he was among the first photographers to do so. Shulman primarily worked in black and white with unconventional infrared film to reduce his subjects to clean, essential lines and shapes. His images of Pierre Koenig’s Case Study House No. 22 (1960) and Richard Neutra’s Kaufmann House, Palm Springs (1947) are famous examples of emergent Modern architecture and its documentation. Born on October 10, 1910 in Brooklyn, NY, Shulman's family moved to Los Angeles when he was a child. He briefly studied at the University of California, Berkeley before returning to Los Angeles where in 1936 he received his first assignment to photograph a house designed by Richard Neutra. Largely a self-taught photographer, Shulman opened his own studio in 1950 and began working on assignments for magazines and architects like his contemporary, Ezra Stoller. Throughout his lifetime, Shulman photographed the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, Charles and Ray Eames, and Oscar Niemeyer. In 2008, he was the subject of a documentary, Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman. His more than 70,000 photographs are housed in the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The artist continued working until the age of 98, and died on July 15, 2009 in Los Angeles, CA.