Los Angeles Times Interview

Julius Shulman

Capturing the Essence of California Architecture

October 9, 1994

By Steve Proffitt, Steve Proffitt is a producer for Fox News and a contributor to National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” and “Morning Edition.” He spoke with Julius Shulman at the photographer’s home in the Hollywood Hills

In 1960, Julius Shulman took a photograph that, perhaps more than any other single image, conveys the style, grace and allure of postwar Los Angeles. Inside a steel-topped glass box balanced lightly on a hilltop, two young women in white cotton chat, while the City of Angels sparkles below. It is a picture both nostalgic and modern, the work of a self-taught photographer who truly invented himself.

In 1936, Shulman used a vest-pocket Kodak to snap a shot of a Hollywood home designed by architect Richard Neutra. A brash 26-year-old, he showed the picture to Neutra, and a career was born. Neutra hired him to photograph some of his other projects, and introduced the young photographer to such other leading West Coast architects as R.M. Schindler, Raphael Soriano and Gregory Ain. Shulman’s dramatic prints played an important role in establishing an international reputation for these and other Southern California architects, especially during the ’50s, a period many consider the golden age of Modernism. More than any architect of that era, he created a public image of the California style of design. Continue reading →