Julius Shulman

It was a pleasure to read the interview with Julius Shulman in the Opinion section of Oct. 9. The interview and the recognition of Shulman's great contribution in architectural photography are long overdue. He is one of California's living treasures. I had the privilege of meeting Shulman and visiting his studio when he donated a photograph of the historic Bradbury Building in Los Angeles last year for the American Institute of Architects/Los Angeles Chapter's silent auction, which benefited the organization's scholarship program.

For proof that Modernism still spins it magic, witness the crowds that descended upon the Palm Springs Modernism Show & Sale last weekend. Though final attendance numbers wouldn't be available until after Modernism Week ends this Sunday, the design exhibition at the Palm Springs Convention Center did have 82 dealers, about 10 more than last year, and they ranged from elegantly spare midcentury furnishings and geometric paintings to ostentatious vintage...

Re "A Photographic Memory" [March 3]: Julius Shulman is truly a living treasure. Most architectural photographers would die before putting a human element in their sterile photos. Julius has people, dogs, even kids' toys in his photos. Nice human touch. Julius has been very generous with his time working with my volunteer group, Friends of Hollyhock House. One time he was showing us a photo of the Wiltern Theatre. I said, "Julius, it looks like you stood in the intersection of Wilshire and Wiltern to take that."

Balthazar Korab, an architect-turned-photographer with a wide-ranging eye whose moody, polished images captured the spirit of midcentury modern architecture and celebrated its masters, including Eero Saarinen and Mies van der Rohe, died Jan. 15 in Royal Oak, Mich. He was 86. Korab, who lived in Troy, Mich., died after a long period of decline caused by Parkinson's disease and a stroke, said his son, Christian Korab. A refugee from Communist-controlled Hungary, Korab came to the United States in 1955 and found work as a designer in Saarinen's Bloomfield, Mich., office.

Julius Shulman, whose luminous photographs of homes and buildings brought fame to a number of mid-20th century modernist architects and made him a household name in the architectural world, has died. He was 98. Shulman, who had been in declining health, died Wednesday night at his home in Los Angeles, according to his daughter Judy McKee. Starting with Richard Neutra in 1936, Shulman's roster of clients read like a who's who of pioneering contemporary architecture: Rudolf M.

Thirteen photographs by architectural photographer Julius Shulman are featured in a 1988 calendar designed by UCLA students Poy Choy Ng and Ann Lin. Published by the realty firm of Mossler, Deasy & Doe, the calendar has photographs chosen by Shulman. In his 51 years of architectural photography in Los Angeles, Shulman has photographed houses and commercial buildings designed by virtually all of the Southland's great architects.

If Southern California and its culture were built on salesmanship, Julius Shulman sold the place as well as anyone. The hugely influential architectural photographer, who died Wednesday at 98, turned snapshots of the region's buildings -- in particular, Modernist houses by Richard Neutra, Pierre Koenig, John Lautner and others -- into crisply alluring campaigns for life in sunny, cosmopolitan and forward-looking Los Angeles.

The life work of photographer Julius Shulman -- whose best-known pictures define Southern California's classic Modernist architecture -- has found a home at the Getty Center. The J. Paul Getty Trust announced Monday that it has acquired Shulman's vast archive and installed it at the Getty Research Institute in Brentwood.

The personal residence and studio of the late iconic photographer Julius Shulman has sold for $2.25 million in the Hollywood Hills. The Midcentury Modern steel-frame house, built in 1950 and designed by Raphael S. Soriano, is a Los Angeles historic landmark. The 3,382-square-foot house sits on a wooded flag-shaped lot of nearly an acre. Features include original fixtures, hardwood walls and built-in cabinetry. The studio includes a fireplace, bedroom and bathroom for a total of four bedrooms and three bathrooms on the property.

The Hollywood Hills residence and studio of the late iconic photographer Julius Shulman has sold for $2.25 million. The Midcentury Modern steel-frame house, built in 1950 and designed by Raphael S. Soriano, is a Los Angeles historic landmark. The 3,382-square-foot house sits on a wooded, flag-shaped lot of nearly an acre. It has original fixtures, cork-paneled entryway and hall, wood-paneled walls and a floor-to-ceiling fireplace in the living room. Pedestal beds, china cabinets and a bench in the kitchen are among the built-ins.

Last time around the focus was Southern California's art history; now homegrown architecture is getting its time in the sun. Getty Trust leaders are announcing Monday the final roster of exhibition and event partners in its Pacific Standard Time spinoff, Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in Southern California, slated to run April through July. They will also be releasing the specific grant amounts given to various museums and institutions: roughly $3.6 million in all. Eight exhibition partners received grants from $260,000 to $445,000 to help mount shows and publish catalogs; eight event partners received grants ranging from $20,000 to $246,000 to organize panels, tours and other programs.

When the architecture firm of Buff, Straub & Hensman designed a two-story house in 1957 for an oak-covered hillside of Pasadena called Poppy Peak, the post-and-beam structure was shy of 1,400 square feet yet felt voluminous, thanks to an open floor plan, a two-story-tall ceiling and an abundance of glass. PHOTO GALLERY: Buff, Straub & Hensman house restored in Pasadena Fast-forward to the present day, and the house has a fresh start to the new year. Christophe Burusco, an attorney and architecture enthusiast, and Scott Lander, principal of the Los Angeles-based historic restoration firm Lander Design , have carefully erased the wear-and-tear of five decades, returning the home once photographed by Julius Shulman to its Midcentury origins.

"Hitchcock," which opens Friday starring Anthony Hopkins as the famed director and Helen Mirren as his wife, has a lot more to catch the eye than Scarlett Johansson 's re-creation of the Bates Motel shower scene in "Psycho. " Production designer Judy Becker walked us through the film's varied interiors, which run from from Old Hollywood parlor to Jet Age kitchen to midcentury bachelor pad at the beach. PHOTO GALLERY: Home design in "Hitchcock" "We followed their basic taste," said Becker, who pored over period photographs of Alfred and Alma Hitchcock's clapboard, pre- World War II residence in Bel-Air and consulted vintage swatch cards for wall paint colors.

Some of L.A.'s best known architecture firms and artists have designed one-of-a-kind lamps to be auctioned Nov. 2 at a fund-raiser for the MAK Center in West Hollywood. Among those who designed, produced and donated their work for the event, dubbed “Light My Way, Stranger” : Ball-Nogues Studio, Cory Buckner, Ehrlich Architects, Hodgetts & Fung, Eric Owen Moss, Barbara Bestor, Dewey Ambrosino, Liz Larner and Sam Durant. All proceeds will support the nonprofit MAK Center for Art and Architecture's programming and stewardship of three dwellings by architect R.M. Schindler: the landmark 1922 Schindler House in West Hollywood, the 1939 Mackey Apartments in the Mid-Wilshire district of L.A., and the 1936 Fitzpatrick-Leland House, the Hollywood Hills West residence where the auction will be held.

In 1949, Eugene Kinn Choy built his family a home in Silver Lake. Deftly set in a narrow hillside lot, it was praised as a model of modernism, photographed by Julius Shulman and its merits noted in national architecture magazines. And yet the house might not have been built at all, if not for Choy's ingenuity and resolve. When racial covenants had threatened to keep him out of the area, he went door to door, seeking neighbors' permission before he moved in. "Even after he got an OK to purchase the land, no mainstream bank would offer financing," says Steven Y. Wong, the curator at the Chinese American Museum.

Julius Shulman received his first Eastman Kodak Brownie as a gift while in high school. Brownie in hand, he proceeded to prodigiously photograph the bridges, streets and buildings of Los Angeles, as well as the local mountains he loved to hike, recalls Judy McKee, the daughter of the iconic photographer, who died two years ago at age 98. "My dad never missed an opportunity to take a photograph. We'd be driving along and he'd suddenly see something: 'Oh, look at that!' Then he'd stop the car, grab his camera, sometimes even climb up on the hood.

One local institution was shooting another. Ninety-six-year-old Julius Shulman, whose photographs made midcentury modern architecture iconic, glamorous and suggestive, spent six Tuesdays in May and June focusing his lens on the Getty Villa, a reproduction of the Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum, the Roman country house buried by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in AD 79.

As soon as the photographer starts shooting, the wiry 88-year-old man behind the cluttered desk becomes as animated as a TV commercial, widening his eyes as he gesticulates at a vintage photograph of a home interior. After devoting most of his life to selling the potential of modern architecture, Julius Shulman isn't shy about mugging for the camera. His usual position, though, is on the other side of the lens.

This week, Rizzoli publishes "Julius Shulman Los Angeles," a new book featuring a variety of shots taken in Southern California by the famed architectural photographer, who died two years ago at age 98. Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne recently caught up with one of the book's co-authors, Sam Lubell, who is also West Coast editor of the Architect's Newspaper. What follows is a condensed version of their email exchange. Does the world need another book on Julius Shulman?

A Midcentury Modern home above the Sunset Strip in Hollywood Hills stands in tribute to its designer, Los Angeles architect Bernard Zimmerman, and the man for whom it was built, architectural photographer Marvin Rand. Zimmerman, who helped found the architecture department at Cal Poly Pomona, also co-founded the Los Angeles Institute of Architecture and Design and helped create the Architecture and Design Museum. Rand, perhaps best known for his eye-catching images of the circular Capitol Records building in Hollywood and the Hunt House in Malibu, chronicled more than five decades of architectural history in Los Angeles.