PHOTOGRAPHER JULIUS SHULMAN DIES

Legendary modernist photographer Julius Shulman passed away at his home on July 15, 2009. One of the preeminent architectural photographers of this century, Shulman chronicled the Modernist landmark buildings of Southern California and elsewhere over five decades. The gallery has represented Shulman since 1995. In 2005, the Getty Museum of Art announced the acquisition of Shulman's entire archive. Shulman's iconic photograph "Case Study House #22, 1960" was recently included in the Museum of Modern Art exhibition Into the Sunset: Photography's Image of the American West and the traveling museum show Birth of the Cool, organized by the Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California.

One of the preeminent architectural photographers of this century, Shulman began his career by photographing the buildings of Richard Neutra; he went on to photograph the buildings of Charles Eames, Frank Lloyd Wright, R.M. Schindler, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Alfred Frey and many others. A formalist, the strong linear element of Shulman's work reflected the concerns of the structures he photographed. Through his precise focus, dramatic lighting, and dynamic compositions, Shulman created an innovative photographic language that was well suited to portray the structures of the modernist architectural pioneers.

Shulman's photographs promoted the concept of Southern California as a utopia of urbane and graceful living created by modernist architecture. Shulman's unforgettable photographs from the Case Study House project were one way that the architectural masterpieces of Southern California were exported to the rest of the U.S. and to Europe. This project, spanning 23 years, involved the construction of prototype houses by the most prominent of the modernist architects of the period. Shulman's photographs of these houses portray not only architectural ingenuity, but the lifestyle out of which this architecture was born.