The photographer : American photographer Julius Shulman's images of Californian architecture have burned themselves into the retina of the 20th century. Some of his architectural photographs, like the iconic shots of Frank Lloyd Wright's or Pierre Koenig's remarkable structures, have been published countless times. The brilliance of buildings like those by Charles Eames, as well as those of his close friend Richard Neutra, was first brought to light by Shulman's photography.
Each Shulman image unites perception and understanding for the buildings and their place in the landscape. Today, a great many of the buildings documented by Shulman have disappeared or been crudely converted, but the thirst for his pioneering images is stronger than ever before. The author : Elizabeth A. T. Smith is Executive Director of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation in New York. Previously, she was Executive Director at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto and Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.
While at LA MOCA she curated the 1989 exhibition Blueprints for Modern Living : History and Legacy of the Case Study Houses. The editor : Peter Goessel runs an agency for museum and exhibition design. He has published Taschen monographs on Julius Shulman, R. M. Schindler, John Lautner, and Richard Neutra, as well as several titles in the Basic Architecture series.