California Modernism

Modernist Architecture in Los Angeles and Palm Springs | a blog by Slav Zatoka

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Check out https://stahlhouse.com/ for the lates news about the Stahl House.

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Fresh off the press: The Stahl House, Case Study House #22 - The Making of a Modernist Icon by Shari Stahl Gronwald, Bruce Stahl and Kim Cross, beautifully published by Chronicle Books - such an aboundence of information about the house and the people connected with it and cherry on top is my humble contribution: my photo of Julius Shulman, the world’s greatest architectural photographer I once interviewed and photographed together with my dear friend, neighbor and a client architect, Rollie Alexander,AIA Many thanks to Shari Stahl Gronwald for inviting me to be part of this project! #architecturalphotography #juliusshulman #casestudyhouse22 #architecture #sharistahl #thestahlhouse #photographer Check it out!

https://www.thelacmastore.org/collections/architecture/products/the-stahl-house-case-study-house-22-the-making-of-a-modernist-icon

https://www.chroniclebooks.com/products/case-study-house-22

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The Stahl House, CSH # 22, January 2017. Stahl House early afternoon tour with docent Tom. Great day in LA with a good friend and an architect from OC, Rollie Alexander of Alexander + Hibbs, AIA, Inc. The house is very well preserved. The Stahl family has done a tremendous job preserving this LA icon. You can book your tour at http://stahlhouse.com/tours/ Be sure to watch http://www.juliusshulmanfilm.com/ documentary first. After weeks of rain and clouds in SoCal - a treat like this!

Only cell phone photography allowed. Handheld Nokia Lumia 1020. DNG developed in Capture One

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SHULMAN AND NEUTRA

part 2

Modernism of Julius Shulman: The perception of Southern California landscape through architectural photography, Slav Zatoka

continued from

In the early years Neutra would direct most of the assignments. That typically meant control over composition, lens choice, hence camera angle and light. As much as it was beneficial for a novice photographer it must have been exhausting as well. As Shulman became more confident they would often fight over creative ideas and direction but generally it was an idiosyncratic relationship. After an assignment Shulman would arrive late in the evening with prints and they would spend hours reviewing the prints for final selection. It’s documented that Neutra often remarked who much he learned about his architecture from Shulman’s representation of it (Rosa 49).

Arts & Architecture was one of the earliest notable relationships Shulman had with magazines. Shulman started working with Entenza in 1938, which is shortly after Entenza bought the magazine. Shulman developed a strong relationship with Esther McCoy during that period. It was purely professional and they published a number of articles in Arts & Architecture together. From the late 1940 through 1960s Shulman made regular trips to meet with his New York based editors.  On top of a large selection of architectural magazines he also published for popular women’s magazines such as Life, Ladies’ Home Journal, House & Garden and Good Housekeeping. Notably, Shulman’s first publication in House & Garden was Frey House in Palm Springs. Shulman’s photographs of mid century modern marvels in Palm Springs were published internationally. Thanks to Shulman’s representation of Clark & Frey’s designs they were praised all over the world and the architects named modern pioneers of the desert (Rosa, 57)

Clark & Frey’s projects can be found in Julius Shulman’s book on Palm Springs architecture 4. Shulman developed a strong relationship with Palm Springs when hiking the trails surrounding the city. Again, he was the right person for the job because no other photographer was able to capture the spirit of this fascinating oasis in the desert as well as Shulman and the vibrant and fast growing recreational community for the California riches kept the architects and Shulman busy with work for years:

Like no other Palm Springs architect, Frey benefitted from the explosion of recreation. When he moved to Palm Springs it was primarily the playground for the super rich, from the industrialists of Maytag and National Cash Register fortunes, o the modern industrialists of the movie industry – Warner, Garbo, Gable, and Disney. But after 1950Frey and the other architects benefitted from a widening of the community’s demographic base. The middle class could also now vacation here, could even have second homes in the desert. The influx of clients for homes and for new recreational venues grew dramatically. (Stern 52)

Shulman was genuinely in love with Palm Springs. He thought of it as one of the great spaces in the country with a uniqueness of “close-at-hand” natural phenomena. (5) Palm Springs fit the modernist ideas of harmony with nature perfectly. It is worth noting here, that contrary to what many falsely assume, Palm Springs is not a man made oasis that nonchalantly wastes borrowed water on upscale golf courses, but is a true natural phenomenon owing its landscape and climate to the closeness of Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains but also its natural water source, the aquifer that lies beneath Coachella Valley desert floor. (11)

Probably the most iconic is Julius Shulman’s photograph of Kaufmann House, designed by Richard Neutra (Fig 11, 12) Shulman recalls that day in his book Architecture and Photography:

Richard Neutra and I had spent three days (and nights) in Palm Springs photographing his Kaufmann House. At twilight of the third day, I walked out to view the house from the garden – I had observed the “Alpenglow” of the developing evening twilight while in the living room and felt that this would create a scene of unusual impact. Running back to the house, I grasped my view camera and film bag. Neutra protested: “ Mr. Kaufmann has been kind enough to take so much time in his home.” He held my arm to restrain me – I broke free, ran outside and set up my camera. The result was one of the most widely published photographs in architectural history. Mr. Kaufmann remarked when I presented him with an enlarged print of the scene: “ We should all be indebted to you for breaking away from Richard’s grip on that wonderful evening. That especially after Life published a vivid statement about my photography, featuring the photograph (Shulman 97)

4 Stern, Michael, and Alan Hess. Julius Shulman: Palm Springs. New York; Palm Springs: Rizzoli, 2008. Print.

Figure 11 Julius Shulman (photographer) Kaufmann House, 1947, architect: Richard Neutra, 1946 Getty Research Institute, © J. Paul Getty Trust.

Figure 12 Julius Shulman (photographer) Kaufmann House, 1949, architect: Richard Neutra, 1946 Getty Research Institute, © J. Paul Getty Trust.

end of part 2

part 1

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SHULMAN AND NEUTRA

part 1

Modernism of Julius Shulman: The perception of Southern California landscape through architectural photography, Slav Zatoka

continued

Figure 14 Julius Shulman and Richard Neutra in 1950, Getty Research Institute, © J. Paul Getty Trust.

Julius Shulman was born on 10/10/10 in Brooklyn, New York as a forth child of Max and Yetta. His parents were Russian Jews who immigrated to the United States with their parents as young children. Four months after Julius was born they moved to Connecticut and after relocating several times finally settled in Central Village in 1914. After buying a one hundred acre farm and establishing a small fur business Max ultimately travelled to California to establish their new life in Los Angeles while the family was still in Connecticut. Shulman’s growing up on a farm, close to nature will later draw him as a young scout, to exploring the trails around Palm Springs, known in the present day as Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument and much later, as a well established photographer, to active environmentalism. His often-repeated phrase: let nature do the rest (Visual Acoustics) echoes throughout his life harmonious with his love of nature and modernist ideas.

In 1920 his business in Los Angeles allowed him to get the rest of the family to California and finally the Shulmans settled in Boyle Heights, East Los Angeles, one of the first Jewish communities in Southern California. 3 years later, when Julius was only 13, his father died of tuberculosis. Yetta was left with five children a house and a store to manage. Julius was the only sibling to attend college while the rest of the family kept busy in the store. Shulman’s first experience with photography was an elective course he took at Roosevelt High School in Los Angeles where he learned the basics and took his first memorable photograph with his family Brownie camera, Track Meet in 1927, which earned him A grade in the class. The stock market crash in 1929 did not have a huge impact on his family business and he was able to enter University of California, Los Angeles School of Engineering. After two weeks he decided to quit and to study geology and after five years of trying different courses at UCLA, during which he continued to photograph passionately and successfully, winning his first competitions and getting published for the first time, he finally transferred to Berkeley in 1936. Soon after he made friends with a young man who was working for Richard Neutra. Shulman met Neutra through his sister who was renting Shulman a room at the time. At the end of February 1936 he paid an impromptu visit to Kuhn’s House, which was under construction at that time. His friend brought him over for an inspection of work progress. Shulman had his pocket camera and a tripod and took half a dozen photographs of the house and the landscape and made prints for his friend. A couple of days later Shulman learned that Neutra, impressed with his prints would like to meet with him for an interview. He finally met Neutra on March 5, 1936 and that day marks the beginning of his career. After the interview, Neutra purchased Shulman’s prints and offered him to photograph his other projects. He also introduced him to Raphael Soriano, R. M. Schindler, Gregory Ain, J R Davidson and Harwell Harris. By the end of that year Shulman’s logbook of photo assignments featured variety of assignments from all these architects and many more. (Rosa 38)

Between 1936 and 1942 Shulman lived in his apartment with his wife Emma. He had darkroom in his bathroom. He had a steady flow of work, did not hire an assistant and made his own prints. He occasionally did advertisements and portraits and began selling his work for publications. Before he entered the army he received a large assignment from the Los Angeles Furniture Company that opened another market for Shulman’s work. In the army he was assigned as hospital photographer. Upon returning from the army the Shulman’s, now with their newborn daughter moved to Emma’s mother’s house. Shulman also rented a small apartment in Los Angeles, which he transformed into office, and as got more and more assignments he hired an assistant and an in house-printer. (Rosa 44)

As Rosa points out, it is important to note that Shulman supervised his in house printing work as he extensively manipulated his images in the darkroom. In the busiest years, Shulman’s reprints of just Neutra’s work for publication requests kept on person busy with months of work (47)

The publications did not happen right away for Shulman. The depression of 1929-1936 left many architects and their clients in difficult financial situations. The projects were often on a budget and that reflected in less attractive interiors and not so glamorous landscaping that could hardly attract potential publication. Luckily for Shulman there was Neutra:

Fortunately, a few projects were accepted for publication. Neutra, for example, had designed Grace Miller house in Palm Springs, California in 1939. Neutra and I spent many days at her home. As the seasons changed and the landscape evolved, we were constantly discovering new moods. The photographs are exhibited and published extensively to this day; a recent exhibition was held in Barcelona, Spain. Mrs. Millers was adept at expressing her observations of my photographs. Many of my earliest archival prints have inscribed notes in which she analyzed my composition. How fortunate for a beginner in photography (my first years as a professional) to receive such constructive comments. On reading them, 60 years later, I realize the import of her critiques – not always favorable, but admittedly objective. By the end of our third year of photography there was a marked improvement in quality of my composition and prints. House Beautiful magazine, on publishing a report on the house in 1941, declared it “the best desert house in North America”. (Shulman, Julius Shulman: Architecture and Its Photography 29)

Shulman noted that working with Neutra was a rare start for a photographer. He documented 90% of Neutra’s buildings. For Neutra, Shulman was a treasure that provided him with perfectly framed, perspectival compositions that incorporated landscaping and interiors with auxiliary lights that balanced the overall exposure of the subject. It is also important to note here, that Neutra was particularly fond of Shulman’s dramatic use of shadows, a practice achieved through overexposing film and under developing it later. Not only it showed more dramatic shadows but also allowed skies to be reproduced more dramatically. Neutra was very much aware of Shulman’s talent. His wife, Dione reflects on the years the two of them worked together: “Richard never fails to speak with delight of how ‘his’ [buildings] through ‘your’ [photographs have]…worked the best!” (Rosa 26).

Shulman created the American image Neutra needed to show in European publications. Shulman’s photographs successfully depicted Neutra’s ideology, use of material and sometimes produced the ideal image for a particular material. Neutra perfectly realized the importance of photographic representation of his work: “His work will survive me. Film [is] stronger and good glossy prints are easier [to] ship than brute concrete, stainless steel or even ideas” (Rosa 49).

Figure 10 Julius Shulman’s darkroom. Two Omega enlargers. The Photography of Architecture and Design, 1977 Shulman, Julius. The Photography of Architecture and Design: Photographing Buildings, Interiors, and the Visual Arts.

end of part 1

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Case Study Program

Modernism of Julius Shulman: The perception of Southern California landscape through architectural photography, Slav Zatoka

continued

John Entenza initiated the Case Study Program in his Arts & Architecture magazine in Los Angeles. Until the present day it remains one of the most significant contributions to mid-century modern architecture. It began with the idea of creating new, affordable single-family housing that could accommodate young, post World World II generation. The idea of breaking up with the old and adapting the new excited many young architects of that time. Despite the fact that the program never really achieved its original goals and many of the designs were never built, it still produced a good number of residential buildings that became icons of modernist architecture. It is important that we see Case Study Program not as an isolated and local experiment but as a part of a larger architectural movement that influenced not only the history of Los Angles but echoed internationally as well. (Smith 8)

Figure 5 Case Study House #21, Los Angeles, 1958 Pierre Koenig, Architect                             Getty Research Institute, © J. Paul Getty Trust.

John Entenza, the father, or as Thomas S. Hines puts it, quoting one of Richard Neutra’s clients, Stuart Bailey: “the high priest of Case Study cult” (Hines 507) was born in Niles, Michigan in 1903. He was a son of a Spanish attorney who often took cases of veterans and migrant workers. His mother was a Scottish mining heiress. Entenza’s inheritance helped him with his early career. He studied at Stanford and at Tulane. After graduating with a BA degree from the University of Virginia he relocated to Los Angeles and worked at MGM Studios on film sets. With a passion for architecture he got a job as editor at California Arts & Architecture magazine. In 1938 Entenza bought the magazine with his inheritance and changed its image dramatically, from a regional publication praising local eclecticism to an internationally acclaimed platform supporting the ideas of modernism in architecture, paintings, film, photography and graphic design. In 1940 Arts & Architecture was born. As critic Esther McCoy put it:

No single event raised the level of taste in Los Angeles as did the magazine; certainly nothing could have put the city on the international scene so quickly (…) a magazine as flat as a tortilla and as sleek as a Bugatti with little advertising and no financial backing became the greatest force in the dissemination of information, architectural and cultural, about California. (Hines 508)

As a result of his passionate interest in architecture Entenza began forming an idea of a curated program that would bring about new ideas in the post war environment, which was a good time for experimenting with new ideas and a suitable moment to break up with the past, but also with the recession coming to an end it was a prosperous time for new construction in Los Angeles. Entenza was genuinely concerned that if no modern architectural idea was put forward, soon, the uncreative construction companies would populate the hungry postwar housing market with boring, conventional and unprogressive homes that would forever change the landscape of the city of Angels. What’s more, Entenza thought it was important to come up with designs that would utilize the new building materials and building techniques brought about by the wartime emergency to construct postwar housing that would not only be revolutionary in design but also extremely easy to build and therefore very affordable.  In January of 1945 Entenza announced Case Study Program in Arts & Architecture and became the official sponsor of designs of modernist houses by selected architects. It was believed that

Figure 6 Cover of Arts & Architecture Case Study House Program, issue, Case Study Houses, 25th Anniversary ed. edition. TASCHEN America LLC, 2009. Print.

Arts & Architecture would actually be able to commission all the designs and construction and then later put it up for sale but it proved logistically and financially impossible and individuals who would choose an architect from Entenza’s approved list commissioned all of the projects. The incentive was that the manufacturers and vendors involved in the project would offer significant discounts in return for publicity, not to mention the general excitement to be part of a ground breaking building experiment. Between 1945 and 1966 there were thirty four houses designed out of which twenty six were built. After Entenza moved to Chicago in late 1960s an additional part of the Case Study Project called Case Study Apartments was realized by Entenza’s successor, David Travers. Under Travers two multiple-units Case Study apartments were commissioned out of which one was built in Phoenix. Rachel Stevenson comments on Case Study Program in her ‘At home’ with the Eameses, one of the chapters of Camera Constructs, a book of essays on architecture and photography we discussed in the previous chapter. Stevenson argues that Case Study house was mostly about the Eameses and that coincidently their commercial successes and closeness to Entenza contributed to the program’s success. She also presents an argument, stressing the importance of Julius Shulman’s photography in being instrumental to Case Study’s popularity across the world. Julius Shulman photographed the famous Eames House on a number of occasions. The one Stevenson concentrates on the most is the one commissioned by Life Magazine, 9 years after the program was completed. Stevenson further argues that Life commissioned the photograph not because of the Case Study House but because of the Eameses. She presents a very interesting portrayal of Charles and Ray Eames as clever image-makers who used images of their house to market their products. The Eameses designed and produced furniture for mass production and saw Case Study Program as excellent opportunity for advertising their products. We must remember that Eames chairs for example, were immensely popular at the time. They were unlike any other design seen before and they were everywhere, from private houses to government offices and universities. Eames chairs gained international fame and became objects of desire that never faded away. (Higgott 67) Julius Shulman not only had an eye for photography but also was a skillful businessman and succeeded, as I mentioned before, not only as an architectural photographer, as a perfect conspirator in enterprises like that of Charles and Ray Eames. Stevenson interviewed Shulman in 2001:

Shulman, who photographed almost all of the Case Study Houses, says that when photographing a house, he would generally take two sets of photographs: one in color with people for the popular press, and another black and white set for architectural publications, without occupants or belongings and very little in the way of furniture save for a few carefully placed items.  (Higgott 65)

Stevenson also comments on the so called: additive process. The design of a building is a process that develops over years and sometimes even during the their entire life. Shulman often travelled with multiple props and furniture to his film sets in order to stage the interiors to make them look like they were inhabited. Sometimes who would radically rearrange the interiors as it often happened when photographing for Neutra. When we compare two images

Figure 7 Job 3000: Location "Portraits," Los Angeles, 1960 Getty Research Institute, © J. Paul Getty Trust.

Figure 8 Julius Shulman (photographer) living room of Case Study House #8 1950 Getty Research Institute, © J. Paul Getty Trust.

Figure 9 Julius Shulman (photographer) Charles and Ray Eames in their living room of Case Study House #8 1958 Getty Research Institute, © J. Paul Getty Trust.

of Eames House taken 8 years apart we can clearly see many differences. The first one, taken at the time Case Study Program was in progress shows the living room of Case Study House #8 with no inhabitants. It is black and white and seems to be focused on the structure of the house, while showing very limited house décor and furniture. One may argue that when Shulman photographed it he arranged the interior to emphasize its architectural values, but as stated above Shulman would often remove the furniture of an already inhabited house, that conflicted with his vision or idea of the interior he was photographing. He often explained he had to do that because the inhabitants would junk it with unnecessary artifacts and furniture style or house arrangement that would be in conflict with modernist ideas and style (Visual Acoustics). The other one is color and focuses on the Eameses, sitting casually on the floor in the center of the picture, surrounded by their belongings. It also clearly exhibits the famous Herman Miller Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman in the foreground as well as one of the other Eames chair in the far background. This difference between lifestyle and architectural approach may suggest that the occupants are only an addition to the building. Shulman throughout his career kept a balance between these two different approaches to photography. Even if stated before, that he would often take two different sets of photograph for different publications, his iconic use of people in purely architectural work seems to be his signature style. Shulman, a great advocate of Modernism communicates its ideas through his photography by showing that the modernist architecture can be both comfortable and livable. Stevenson also argues that Shulman color representation of Case Study houses served the program better than his purely architectural representations in black and white. It was the occupant that was suppose to be the most important in this program, not the buildings themselves. Some, including Stevenson, argue that in some respects the program failed. It did not fulfill its promise of delivering a low cost solution for the postwar housing problem, but instead it produced a significantly smaller than anticipated number of not-so-cheap design houses commissioned by individual clients. Mainstream developers adopted neither the designs, nor the ideas. Instead, the program reached the audience far greater than the one originally targeted by Entenza and thanks to Shulman’s photography it turned out to be highly successful and hugely influential. Through Shulman’s photography the idea of modern architecture was delivered to millions across the world, who could experience Case Study House first hand. Shulman’s careful use of human models in his architectural photography gives us another dimension to study his work. Thanks to his photography we learn about urban anthropology of Los Angeles by being introduced not only to the buildings but also to the occupants and their daily activities. It also important to mention that Case Study Program was not an isolated phenomenon but a part of a larger architectural trend in Los Angeles and worldwide. In 1927 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe invited such big names as J.J.P Oud, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Mart Stam to participate with him in Weissenhofsiedlung, an architectural exhibition of minimal housing in Stuttgart. There were also similar projects in mid 1920s in Frankfurt, designed by Ernst May and 1931 Berlin Building Exposition by Mies van der Rohe, Lilly Reich and Marcel Bauer (Case Study Houses 8). When evaluating the work of contemporary architects we continue to find influence and inspiration coming from Case Study Program, whether in materials used or the simplicity and modesty in size this project continues to echo in architecture after so many years. Some of the characteristic features of modernist architecture like organicism, modular components and integration with site are not unique to Case Study Houses. One of the architects Shulman worked extensively was R. M. Schindler, who never participated in the Case Study Program but continued experimenting with the idea and the modernist design and was probably one of the most influential architects of the most recent past.

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Camera Constructs

Modernism of Julius Shulman: The perception of Southern California landscape through architectural photography, Slav Zatoka

continued

As we have established before, photography and architecture had a strong relationship. First, out of necessity, when in order to produce a photographic image, long exposures had to be made and naturally the subject matter had to be able to withstand that. Soon it was realized that photography had a unique ability to represent architectural space and form. Architectural photography not only begins to appear in mainstream architecture publications, but it is widely used in advertising and lifestyle. It also becomes instrumental for many architects in constructing their new ideas. It plays a vital role in the design process and finally it becomes a crucial medium in shaping our understanding of modern cities and urban designs. By the end of the 19th century architects and clients realized the power of architectural photography thus making it a fast growing business in industrialized countries.

           Higgott and Wrey, present an argument that it was the remarkable explosion of creative photography in 1920s and 30s and the beginning of architectural Modernism that created the distinctive practice of architectural photography:

The camera has had a profound impact upon the evolution of modernity and how architecture is imagined and, indeed, constructed. Architecture and photography combined to construct the contemporary identity of the house, the workplace and the city. Historic or traditionally designed buildings, of course, continued to form as frequent and legitimate a subject for photography as the new architecture, but the dynamic between Modernist architecture and the expressive new photography enjoyed a particularly fruitful creative synergy, and, more significantly, caused a distinct shift in sensibility, affecting how all architecture and the city as an entirety were represented and imagined. Photography did not simply document built works; it was employed in the process of surveying, conceptualizing, passing judgment on and planning the city; in state propaganda, advertising and architectural and planning education; and as a creative tool within design processes. (Higgott 2)

It seems that photography can have both, positive and negative influence on architecture. It can potentially be a perfect tool in representing ideas of modernist architecture but also, with its narrowness, can limit the way it is being interpreted, understood and developed. Photography can present space and form but some aspects of its day-to-day functionality are very difficult to capture photographically. Furthermore, architectural photography tends to present architecture in an ideal, abstract way, often emphasizing its photographic representation rather than built reality. Shulman’s architectural photography brings about the necessary distance to the medium that helps us discover the architecture that it represents without being too expressive and at the same time Shulmans is often determined to break away from lifeless idealized and abstract photography. He brings people into his photographs. Shulman keeps the perfect balance between his clean photographic set arrangements, masterful combination of ambient and strobe light, creative use of natural light and day-to-day details that make his photographs uniquely appealing, straightforward and incredibly powerful. His architectural photography is governed by two main, controlling ideas: to show the most accurate representation of the real and to capture its day-to-day contexts. Shulman’s photography is so universal in representing reality that it makes his work successful not only in architectural publications but also in lifestyle and commercial advertising (Zatoka 2014).

Higgott and Wrey (2) argue further that architectural photography has a tremendous impact on the mainstream architecture discourse. In the beginning of this chapter Thomas S Hines and Eric Bricker make a point that for every person seeing a building there may be 10,000 who view it as a photograph.(Visual Acoustics). Vilem Flusser, in his Towards Philosophy of Photography describes human culture as a space in time divided by two major points in history, the first one, around the middle of the second millennium BC, which can be coined as “linear writing” (40), and the second one, the one we are still in, that he refers to as: “the invention of technical images” (Fussler 40). Everything in today’s world is recorded in images and as a result of this, new buildings are designed around those recorded images and based on photo realistic representations of other designs and buildings, thus, as Higgott and Wrey put it, camera constructs what it sees (Higgott 4). Here we have Flusser and his argument on technical images, which as he claims, displace texts. This is particularly interesting when compared to Sontag’s and Berger’s comments discussed here before, on traditional images in primitive cultures and in the so called modern primitivism:

The technical image is an image produced by apparatuses. As apparatuses themselves are the products of applied scientific texts, in the case of technical images one is dealing with the indirect products of scientific texts. This gives them, historically and ontologically, a position that is different from that of traditional images. Historically, traditional images precede texts by millennia and technical ones follow on after very advanced texts. Ontologically, traditional images are abstractions of the first order insofar as they abstract from the concrete world while technical images are abstractions of the third order: They abstract from texts which abstract from traditional images which themselves abstract from the concrete world. Historically, traditional images are prehistoric and technical ones ‘post-historic’ (in the sense of the previous essay). Ontologically, traditional images signify phenomena whereas technical images signify concepts. Decoding technical images consequently means to read off their actual status from them. Technical images are difficult to decode, for a strange reason. To all appearances, they do not have to be decoded since their significance is automatically reflected on their surface – just like fingerprints, where the significance (the finger) is the cause and the image (the copy) is the consequence. (Flusser 120)

The advent of Modernism and its aesthetics, “the International Style”, brought about “the new photography” (Higgott 5). Both architecture and photography used the same language.  They shared the same modern aesthetics and understanding of the modern world. Instead of the romantic ideas of the past we have a new language of the future. The form ever follows the function, and this is the law[1]. As stated here previously, architecture historians, like Thomas S. Hines, for example, stress the role of architectural photography not only in documenting it but also in making modern architecture so popular. If it weren’t for the unique relation between architecture and photography, perhaps the architectural style if not the entire movement in architecture would not have developed so pervasively. The importance of architectural photography in reception of modern architecture is documented in many publications like Architectural Review, or German publications from late 1920s. Higgott argues however, that this new way of seeing, highly edited, once outside of the camera (the objective apparatus) may be more subjective than we think:

Publications from an early stage by leading Modernist architects, Walter Gropius and Erich Mendelsohn among them, underline the importance of the photographic image in their work. Much of the photography of this period certainly sought to have validity beyond that of being a record of buildings. By the control and selection of images, the architect or editor publishing them endeavored to create a polemic: a highly edited view of the possibilities of the architecture of their time, with aspects of the building concerned presented as evidence. A new objectivism (in the sense of a focus on their object qualities, their ‘thing-ness’, as Sachlichkeit can also be translated) was apparent in this “New Photography”: buildings were presented as objects in light, with stark shadows, rigorous symmetry and disregard of detail and use. (5)

After World War II architectural photography developed further and as color photography was introduced, it allowed architects and editors show modernist architecture in its full spectrum. One of the earliest and most successful pioneers of color architectural photography of modernist architecture was of course none other but Julius Shulman, who started using color more or less by the time who started working on Case Study Program.

[1] Words often used to describe the principles of modernist architecture, coined by American architect Louis Sullivan in his article: The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered, 1896.

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Architecture of the Sun: Los Angeles Modernism 1900-1970, by Thomas S. Hines

This is a must-read if you are interested in LA architecture. Thomas S. Hines is a professor emeritus of history and architecture at the University of California, Los Angeles. He also appears in Visual Acoustics 

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On Photography

Modernism of Julius Shulman: The perception of Southern California landscape through architectural photography, Slav Zatoka

continued

Susan Sontag describes the photographic camera as “the ideal arm of consciousness in its acquisitive mood” (4). Photography is evidence of something that once existed. However, it may be distorted, and as Sontag points out, even the greatest names in the documentary photography: Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn and Russell Lee, who, commissioned by The Farm Security Administration traveled throughout the United States in 1930s photographing the Great Depression and the first years of war, could not help being subjective in their work. Photographers make decisions about exposure, light conditions, texture; they have their own moral standards and their own notions of poverty or exploitation. Sontag insists photography is an aggressive act, which makes reality easily controllable. This happens with the idealization of subjects as in nature or fashion photography, but also in apparent plainness of still life, mug shots, or class pictures. Every aspect of using the camera implies aggression (Sontag 7).

Sontag goes on describing photography as it evolves from 1839 to her present time. From the age of cumbersome and expensive cameras available to the wealthy few to the late twentieth century tourists with at least two cameras, photographing everything they see. Photography becomes a widely used amusement, practiced by people as a social rite rather than art. Pictures become evidence of the trips made, the consumption of goods and the family life. Photographing is also not participating physically in the event. It is an act of not taking part in life events, “photographing is essentially and act of non-intervention” (Sontag 11).

It is a passive observation of events that Sontag compares to sexual voyeurism. Diane Arbus, a New York photographer also quoted by Sontag said she always felt like photography was a naughty thing to do “When I first did it I felt very perverse”, (13). Looking back at Figure 4. in which Antonioni has David Hemmings photographing Veruschka, we may see the analogy to Sontag’s remarks on aggressive nature of photography, often associated with intrusion, trespassing, exploitation, and sometimes sexual in its nature.

Figure 4. Veruschka von Lendorff and David Hemmings in Blowup directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. By Arthur Evans/© Turner Entertainment Co.—A Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

Finally, Sontag comments on the important role of photography in private life where photography is both a pseudo-presence and a token of absence. The images of family members are cherished and displayed in the living rooms of our homes and hidden in our wallets. This undisputable, talismanic and magical power of the photographs of our loved ones is stronger in some cultures. Sontag argues, in next chapter discussed here, that modern cultures are the most dependent and the most attached to photographs. A modern capitalist society requires a culture based on images. What better way to endorse this argument that to give an example of the most advanced, modern, capitalistic society of our times: Japan. On March 11, 2011 the Tohuku region of Japan was hit both with a powerful earthquake and a tsunami that devastated cities on the Northeast coast of the main island. The cleaning up and rebuilding began with searching, recovering and cleaning up of private photographs of the tsunami victims. The operation was conducted on an unprecedented scale by the army, the police and many volunteers. The process of restoring life in the region began with the recovery of personal and family photographs of victims and returning them to survivors (Zatoka, Sunflowers in Fukushima 52-104).

In another chapter of Sontag’s book she comments on photographic images versus the reality. If we look at the history of human thought, philosophers since Plato tried to loosen our dependence on images when describing the real. E. H. Gomrbrich (1960) quoted by Sontag argues that primitive societies did not have a clear distinction between the real and its images. For them they were two distinct representations of the same energy or spirit (qtd. in Sontag 155). Primitive people feared the camera and believed it would deprive them of their being. Nadar [1] mentions in his memoir published in 1900 that Balzac he had similar anxieties related to the camera. Balzac believed that a human body in its natural state consisted of series of ghostly images and taking a photograph would surely detach of those layers from the body. This theory that a person is composed of an aggregate of appearances from our entire life was present in many novels by Balzac.

When photography was being invented reality itself was understood as a kind of writing. Niepce called his process heliography: sun-writing. Fox Talbot called the camera “the pencil of nature” (Sontag 160). It is very important to note Feuerbach’s (1989) observations on “original” versus “copy”. The notions of reality and image are complimentary. When reality changes, the image is affected as well and vice versa. Our era does not prefer images to reality out of perversity but as a result of seeing reality in more and more complex ways, weakening its notion progressively. Feuerbach dismisses theological ideas as psychological projections = a set of images; when he calls religion “the dream of the human mind” (qtd. in Sontag 160). The fear of the camera is still present today in our attachment to part with images of our loved ones. Our reluctance to throw them away or tear the up, or as stated before in this chapter, in case of coastal communities of northeastern Japan, to let them go and vanish in mud and debris of houses after a cataclysm such as tsunami, proves our sentimental attachment to images of loved ones, especially those already deceased or far away. As Sontag writes:

But the true modern primitivism is not to regard the image as a real thing; photographic images are hardly that real. Instead, reality has come to seem more and more like what we are shown by cameras. It is common now for people to insist about their experience of a violent event in which they were caught up—a plane crash, a shoot-out, a terrorist bombing—that “it seemed like a movie.” This is said, other descriptions seeming insufficient, in order to explain how real it was. While many people in non-industrialized countries still feel apprehensive when being photographed, divining it to be some kind of trespass, an act of disrespect, a sublimated looting of the personality or the culture, people in industrialized countries seek to have their photographs taken—feel that they are images, and are made real by photographs. (Sontag 161)

This short analysis brings us closer to understanding of Julius Shulman success. His images of mid century modern architecture not only surpassed the popularity of the buildings themselves but also changed the notion of the real. Shulman’s architectural images contributed to the popularity of a particular architectural period.

There are some notable observations in the present day as far as the notions of photography are concerned, which will not be discussed here, mainly because they do not pertain to the era of Julius Shulman. We must establish at this point that Julius Shulman used optical chemical process when the Internet did not even exist. His architectural images, the techniques he applied to produce them, as well as the ways in which his work gained such a widespread popularity must be measured according to his era and the technology available in his time. One of the most informative articles on the subject include: Photography in the Age of Facebook by Johhny Winston, Everyone shoots first: reality in the age of Instagram by Maria Bustillos, and The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era, by William J. Mitchell.

[1]  His real name was Gaspard-Felix Tournachon (1820-1910), known for his photographic portraits, was also a caricaturist, journalist, novelist and a balloonist. His famous portraits include: Jules Verne, Aleixandre Dumas, Charles Baudelaire and George Sand.

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Stopped by to photograph this only Arts & Architecture Case Study program project built in Arizona yesterday. Recognized as one of Al Beadle’s best “Triad Apartments” broke the mold of the conventional apartment, providing (3) one-bedroom/den or two-bedroom units of 840+- sq ft.  Each apartment contains a living room, kitchen, bath and a study as well as a private outdoor patio. 

More recently Beadle has been rediscovered for his stylish mid-century residential housing stock and for his influence on desert modernism. All of Beadle's output reflects a rigorous, rectilinear modernist idiom consistent with the work of Mies van der Rohe, Richard Neutra and the postwar steel-frame houses typified by the Case Study experiments.

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Ways of Seeing

Modernism of Julius Shulman: The perception of Southern California landscape through architectural photography, Slav Zatoka

continued

John Berger argues that the process of seeing a painting and consequently seeing everything else, a photograph or architecture is less spontaneous that we may think. It is largely influenced by the conventions of the European art in which the perspective centers everything on the eye of the beholder. (Berger, John. Ways of Seeing) It seems natural to place the viewer in the center of this experience. It also appears, as Berger puts it, we are like a lighthouse, only instead of emitting the light, the appearances travel inside that lighthouse like a beam. Respectively, if art is a representation of reality then the human eye is the center of the world and it can only be in one place at a time. It travels with the world. We also make decisions about what we look at and relate to it. The way we relate to what we see also changes over time. For instance we may see fire differently form the people of Middle Ages who believed in the physical reality of hell. With the invention of the camera the human eye did not have to be in the center of the appearances and the images cameras created could travel around the world:

I am an eye. A mechanical eye. I, the machine, show you a world the way only I can see it. I free myself for today and forever from human immobility. I’m in constant movement. I approach and pull away from objects. I creep under them. I move alongside a running horse’s mouth. I fall and rise with the falling and rising bodies. That is, I, the machine, maneuvering in the chaotic movements, recording one movement after another in the most complex combinations.

Freed from the boundaries of time and space, I co-ordinate any and all points of the universe, wherever I want them to be. My way leads towards the creation of a fresh perception of the world. Thus I explain in a new way the world unknown to you. (Berger 17; Dziga Vertov, 1923)

Furthermore, Berger argues that the invention of the camera changed the way we see things and even changed the paintings painted long before the camera was invented. Originally paintings could only be seen in one place. With the camera they could be reproduced in millions of copies. What also seems very important, it allowed only details of paintings to be reproduced, giving them a totally new meaning they did not have before. Originally paintings were an integral part of buildings and were either intended for a particular space, like a church or a chapel, or were telling a history of that building. Photographic reproductions deprived paintings of their original context, surroundings, meaning and value. The reproduction could be used a illustration of another meaning. It could change its meaning when juxtaposed with another image in a magazine spread. With the invention of the camera paintings did not have their silence any more. They could be filmed by a filmmaker and edited to show only sections of it. They could also be edited to music which could completely change its meaning as well. Another argument presented in the first chapter of Ways of Seeing is that the false religiosity, which surrounds the original works of art, is ultimately derived from its cash market value. It appears that value is a substitute for what these works of art lost after they had been photographed and reproduced (Berger 23). The stillness of paintings can often be powerful. This so called reversed beam of information coming back to the viewer changes forever. It becomes distorted. To proves this Berger gives an example of a painting by Vincent Van Gogh. We can contemplate the landscape and its scenery but the meaning of it changes dramatically once we add words to it. If we learn from these words that this is the last painting by Van Gogh before he committed suicide, somehow the words change the painting and now become an illustration to these words.  

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AIA Los Angeles

Additionally, Al Beadle Case Study Apartments in Phoenix, AZ, the only design in the Case Study House program built outside of California. Details can be found here.

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For those interested in Alhacen: Alhacen’s Theory of Visual Perception, A. Mark Smith, American Philosophical Society. English Translation and the Commentary of the First Three Books of Alhacen’s De aspectibus, the Medieval Latin Version of Ibn al-Haytham’s Kitab al-Manazir 

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Book of Vision

Modernism of Julius Shulman: The perception of Southern California landscape through architectural photography, Slav Zatoka

continued

As mentioned before Alhacen played an important role in explaining the science of optics. He began his analysis by linking the observations of ancient Greeks and the science of late Middle Ages. In his critical edition of Kit¯ab al-Mana¯zir, A. Mark Smith argues that in his attempt to explain human vision Alhacen presented a convincing defense of intromissionism. (Alhazen, and A. Mark Smith) In antiquity there were two main visual theories. The first one is intromissionism, in which rays from the object were thought to enter the eye to produce an impression of it. The second one is extramissionism, in which it was believed the eye produces rays that emitted towards the object, carry the perception back to the eye.

Alhacen was in favor of intromissionism. In his studies he integrated the anatomical, physiological, physical and mathematical aspects of vision. The extramissionism may seem absurd to us today and it certainly did not make sense to Alhacen, when he argued that such rays that the eye presumably emitted would never be able to travel to distant stars and come back to the eye. It is believed that Plato was in favor of this theory and based his conclusions on his observations of nature and animals at night. The glowing eyes lead him to believe that the eye must emit some supernatural rays. It was also believed that there is a vision-producing pneuma or some sort of gas substance, which situated between the eye and the brain, transforms the object into the image in the brain.

Alhacen begins his analysis with the observation that bright light and colors cause the eye pain, therefore, the eye must be receiving something from the outside. We can only imagine the circumstances of the profound discovery Alhacen made in favor of intromissionism, when experimenting with camera obscura.

Figure 3: Ibn al-Haytham experimenting with his dark room (calling it Albait Almuzlim)- translated into Latin as camera obscura, which simply means “dark room”. Ali Amro, Creative representation of Ibn al-Haytham by the artist, drawing.

When observing the image of the object it was pointing at, formed on the opposite side of the chamber, Alhacen began laying foundation in the understanding of vision and the eye. Some of the questions and problems presented in Book of Optics did not find answers until Kepler came up with his theory of retinal image. (Smith)

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CSH 1953 also known as CSH #16. Designed by Craig Ellwood. Details about the house can be found in this PDF of the original publication in Arts and Architecture CSH series:

http://www.artsandarchitecture.com/case.houses/pdf01/1953.pdf

photo: Slav Zatoka

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The Lovell Beach House, by Rudolf Schindler, built in 1926 is located on Balboa Peninsula, in Newport Beach, CA. One of the earliest examples of modernist architecture in America. Photo: Slav Zatoka.

Notice the entire structure of the house is lifted up. A 1926 design that could have saved hundreds of houses in New Orleans if adopted. As a matter of fact, Brad Pitt’s foundation to rebuilt New Orleans after Katrina had commissioned a design, very similar to this one and built a number of houses in the most vulnerable areas of the city. Also, very interesting De Stijl influences in the structure of this house!

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I am very excited to have scheduled my Eames House visit, currently the home of The Eames Foundation. I look forward to it! I must also say I feel privileged to have spoken to one of the board directors, the granddaughter of Charles and Ray Eames, Lucia Dewey Atwood, who kindly offered assistance with my research. 

If you feel passionate about the Eames House, midcentury modern architecture or generally feel like you would like to do something to preserve the cultural heritage of Southern California, please consider donating your time to help the Foundation preserve the house. 

[email protected]