Julius Shulman

2004 Honoree / Outstanding Achievement In Architecture Photography

Julius Shulman has spent more than six decades in the world of architecture, and his photographs have come to be a definitive record of modern architecture in Southern California as well as throughout the world.

Growing up on a farm in Connecticut, Julius Shulman developed a knowledge and appreciation of the nature of light. It was California, however, that introduced him to architecture. A chance encounter with architect Richard Neutra was a pivotal launching point for the career of one of the world’s great architectural photographers.

Shulman began shooting for other important Los Angeles architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright, and later Pierre Koenig, who used him exclusively. In 1960, Shulman created what has become possibly the most famous photograph of architecture in the world: Case Study House No. 22, depicting two young women perched within a glass box overlooking Sunset Boulevard.
Julius Shulman enjoys the international esteem of a new generation eager for images of the past to inform the present and future. Inspired by his love of nature, Shulman’s photographs play with nature and the built environment, like his photograph of the Department of Water and Power building in downtown Los Angeles, where a natural space in the foreground of the photo changes into the constructed form of the building.

Now in his 90s, Shulman continues a vital role in architectural photography, such as his recent photographs of the J. Paul Getty Center and the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain. His autobiography, soon to be published by Taschen, will cover an illustrious career spanning 62 years. Mr. Shulman has also recently toured Japan and China to lecture and conduct workshops. There is a special program in his honor, the Julius Shulman Institute, at Woodbury University in Burbank, California.