Marvin Rand, a photographer whose images captured more than five decades of Los Angeles' architectural history, including landmark works by Irving Gill, Charles and Henry Greene and Watts Towers creator Simon Rodia, died Saturday at his Marina del Rey home. He was 84.
The cause was heart disease, according to his son Peter.
Among Rand's most eye-catching photographs are his images of the circular Capitol Records Tower in Hollywood and the minimalist Hunt House in Malibu. He recorded the intricate details of Rodia's Watts Towers in a painstaking 1,500-photo survey for the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department. His extensive documentation of three of California's most important architects resulted in the books "Greene & Greene" (2005), about the legendary masters of the Craftsman period, and "Irving J. Gill: Architect 1870-1936" (2006), about the pioneering Modernist.
Although he operated in the shadow of his more famous rival, the noted architectural photographer Julius Shulman, Rand was an artist with the camera, admired for his grasp of the interplay among form, line and light in the structures he caught on film.
"Rand is a genius when he reads the lens behind the black cloth," California architectural historian Esther McCoy wrote of Rand shortly before her death in 1989. "He is one of a half-dozen photographers who have set the standards for this relatively new profession."
An honorary member of the American Institute of Architects, a rare distinction for a photographer, Rand worked with many of today's cutting-edge architects from the beginning of their careers and kept pace with them through the years. His client list is a who's who of architects past and present, including Charles Eames, Louis I. Kahn, Craig Ellwood, Cesar Pelli and Frank Gehry.
The son of a furniture maker and a clothing designer, Rand was born in Boyle Heights on Dec. 26, 1924, and attended Roosevelt High School. He studied photography at Los Angeles City College until 1943, when he entered the Army Air Forces. He served as an aerial photographer during World War II.
After the war he enrolled at Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles (before it moved to its present location in Pasadena) and joined a circle of avant-garde artists and designers, including Saul Bass, Alvin Lustig, Lou Danziger, and Charles and Ray Eames. Through this network he met McCoy, who would launch him on his career in architectural photography.
