Subtitled The Modernism of Julius Shulman this
documentary studies Shulman’s career and his relationship with California’s modernist
architectural movement of the twentieth century. At the time of filming, around
2004, (the documentary was released in 2008), Shulman is a youthful 93 year old and, while he has composed some iconic
photographs of Southern California’s most famous buildings, both private and
commercial, in this film it is his humanity and personality that engage as much
as his work. Shulman grew up with Los
Angeles, we are told. Having left UCLA after seven
years, without a degree, he ventured to the nascent city (or collection of
cities) that was Los Angeles
in the 1930s, a creative individual looking for an outlet for that creativity. Shulman's Opus No.1 was a commission
for Neutra's Kun house, and he went on from there to become
a highly influential architectural photographer, creating the images that for most
people represent the actuality of a building they will never see in person. In
addition to Neutra, Richard Schindler, Gehry, Lloyd-Wright, Lautner, and Pierre Koenig are some of
the other, by now well-known, architects whose work he helped to promote.
With lots of input
from Shulman himself, and those in the circle of modernist architects who
worked in the movement’s apparent golden age in California when Shulman was at
his peak, the architecture buff will find much of interest. There is little
analysis of the buildings themselves or, for that matter, of Shulman’s
photographs, so much of this interest will probably be in the anecdotes that
abound. The photographs themselves sometimes remind, or inform, the audience of buildings that have been since
demolished or altered from their original design. One sequence involves the restoration of such
a building, whose new owners, referring to Shulman's photographs,
reverse every modification made to the house's original conception. Some of the buildings visited here include
the Walt Disney concert hall, the Case Study House #22 (on which one of the
most memorable sequences is based), and the Albert Frey house, as one with the rocky hills of Palm Springs.
One apparent omission is
Shulman’s own house, although we do see his lush garden. Apparently it’s rather
overgrown, and visitors have sometimes threatened to “cut away my density”, he
jokes.
Shulman is one of
life’s enthusiasts, and this has been modernist architecture’s stroke of good
fortune, that he has championed it’s cause. At the time of filming, he is still making public
appearances, and taking commissions, and developing a course in architecture to be presented at California’s Woodbury
University. The occasion
of his honorary doctorate there is an emotional one for Shulman.
Narrated by Dustin Hoffman, and edited in an accessible style reminiscent of an
educational film you might encounter in a modern museum, Visual Acoustics,
contains a lot of historical context on the modernist movement. There is, no
doubt, some great work in the buildings and the photographs both, but we learn
little of the mechanics of either. Maybe, for all the artistry in Shulman’s compositions,
the vicarious experience is just not enough, maybe you just had to be there.
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