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Julius Shulman
Julius Shulman was an American architectural photographer best known for his photograph “Case Study House #22[1], Los Angeles, 1960. Pierre Koenig, Architect.” The house is also known as The Stahl House. Shulman’s photography spread California Mid-century modern around the world. Through his many books, exhibits and personal appearances his work ushered in a new appreciation for the movement beginning in the 1990s.
His vast library of images currently reside at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. His contemporaries include Ezra Stoller and Hedrich Blessing Photographers. In 1947, Julius Shulman asked architect Raphael Soriano to build a mid-century steel home and studio in the Hollywood Hills.[2]
Some of his architectural photographs, like the iconic shots of Frank Lloyd Wright’s or Pierre Koenig’s remarkable structures, have been published countless times. The brilliance of buildings like those by Charles Eames, as well as those of his close friend, Richard Neutra, was first brought to light by Shulman’s photography. The clarity of his work demanded that architectural photography had to be considered as an independent art form. Each Shulman image unites perception and understanding for the buildings and their place in the landscape. The precise compositions reveal not just the architectural ideas behind a building’s surface, but also the visions and hopes of an entire age. A sense of humanity is always present in his work, even when the human figure is absent from the actual photographs.
Today, a great many of the buildings documented by Shulman have disappeared or been crudely converted, but the thirst for his pioneering images is stronger than ever.
www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Shulman
Image courtesy of Jim McHugh
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Time Magazine names Stahl House photo one of the most influential in history
The Julius Shulman shot of an LA house helped reshape ideas of architecture and the American Dream
Time Magazine has trained its editorial eye on the millions of images produced in the nearly 200-year-old history of the photographic medium and come up with 100 that it deems the most influential in the history of the world. Appearing on that prestigious list is Julius Shulman’s iconic image of one of the most famous homes in Los Angeles: the Stahl House.
Also known as Case Study House No. 22, the home was designed by Pierre Koenig as part of the Case Study program sponsored by Arts & Architecture that showcased the works of some of California’s greatest modern architects. Perched in the Hollywood Hills, the glass-walled home seems to float above the lights of the city in Shulman’s brilliant photos—smartly taken both at night and during the day, when views from the pool deck are equally impressive.
The two women Shulman enlisted to pose within the glass-walled home look a little out of place among the burnt bodies and war-torn cities depicted in many of the other photos on the list, but it’s certainly true that Shulman’s photo significantly impacted contemporary attitudes toward modern architecture, Los Angeles, and even the American Dream.
At a time when a two-story home fronted by a green lawn and a white picket fence still embodied success for many Americans, Shulman’s shot presented a starkly different alternative: a dramatic, glassy box that seems to defy gravity—and yet still looks like home.
As Time argues, the picture “perfected the art of aspirational staging, turning a house into the embodiment of the Good Life, of stardusted Hollywood, of California as the Promised Land.”
- The Most Influential Images of All Time [Time Magazine]
- Mapped: The Case Study Houses That Made Los Angeles a Modernist Mecca [Curbed LA]
- LA's Most Famous House Finally Makes the National Register [Curbed LA]
- LA's Most Iconic House is at the Center of an Ugly Legal Battle [Curbed LA]
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Photos: Case Study House No. 22: The story behind L.A.’s original dream home
The view looking toward the kitchen shows its floating cooking and bar islands. Expanses of glass windows enclose the house on three sides and give the L-shape pavilion a 270-degree mountain-to-ocean panorama. A prefabricated fireplace acts as a focal point for the living room. Read the full story on growing up in Case Study House No. 22. Back to L.A. at Home (Julius Shulman Photography Archives / J. Paul Getty Trust)
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