Hello again, Mr. Shulman

My chance encounter with Julius Shulman began when my architect friend Lisa called. "I think your old house is in this new Julius Shulman book," she said. "Come by and check it out." Lisa knew about my affection for my childhood home in the hills overlooking the San Fernando Valley. My parents bought the lot in the early '50s. They adored architect Calvin Straub's post-and-beam home in Pasadena and commissioned Buff, Straub and Hensman to design a split-level version in Sherman Oaks. Straub hired landscape architect Emmet Wemple, who later helped to design the grounds at the Getty Center. We moved in when I was 3. I had not been back since I was 17, but I often pined for that house on Inwood Drive.

On Page 266 of "Modernism Rediscovered," two images were snatched right out of my memory. One showed the glassed-in living room on Inwood Drive frozen in a simpler time, before my parents' marriage disintegrated, before a heart attack took my father at age 47 on the cusp of my first year at Grant High. The other was an exterior shot of the hidden patio, with my mother and me sitting on a slat bench beside our Siamese cat, Burma.

The existence of these photographs was not news to me. I remember the day in 1959 when Shulman came to Sherman Oaks. He spent the whole day, shooting inside and out. He photographed me and a little friend as we watched TV in the family room.

I bought the book and studied the two scenes. This was the home where my parents entertained so proudly, the conversation piece I showed off to friends, the safe haven where my mother flourished as an artist and I became inspired to try photography. My first kiss came at the front door after a concert at the Troubadour. Unfortunately, memories lose vividness with time. Shulman's images were crisp and delivered a jolt. I needed to see more.

Lisa's late father had been an architect, and her mother knew Shulman well enough to give me his number in the Hollywood Hills. He answered after one or two rings and listened courteously to my story. Four decades had passed, but he remembered the house on Inwood Drive. I finally popped the question: Could I possibly buy prints? He said "Of course" and invited me to his studio to inspect proofs.

Two weeks later I drove to Shulman's home. I expected a cursory transaction, but he showed me to a table and said to take my time. When I looked down, there was my life etched in perfectly lighted black-and-white images from Feb. 4, 1959.