Representing Julius Shulman's career as an architectural photographer from 1935 to 2009, the archive documents the modern movement in architecture spanning 60 years and serves as a historical record of the Southern California landscape. The archive comprises 537 linear feet of Shulman's vintage and modern photographs, contact prints, negatives, transparencies, clippings, and indices.

Throughout his long career, photographer Julius Shulman created one of the most comprehensive visual chronologies of modern architecture and the development of the Los Angeles region. Shulman was born October 10, 1910 in Brooklyn, New York, and moved to Los Angeles, California in 1920. Throughout the 1930s Shulman used an Eastman Kodak Vest-Pocket camera to photograph historical locations in Los Angeles. In 1936 he photographed Richard J. Neutra's Kun House (Los Angeles, Calif.) and was subsequently asked by Neutra to photograph some of his other projects. Through his relationship with Neutra he was able to secure other architectural photography commissions, documenting the work of such prolific architects as R.M. Schindler, Raphael Soriano, Gregory Ain, J.R. Davidson, John Lautner and Pierre Koenig, as well as many others. Shulman frequently worked with such writers and editors as Esther [Tobey] McCoy, John Entenza, Dan MacMasters, and Barbara Lenox. While he also produced product and furniture photographs for designers, he is most acclaimed for his iconic images of mid-century modern buildings including the Case Study houses of Southern California.

537.0 linear feet (over 260,000 negatives, prints, transparencies and related printed material)

Contact Library Reproductions and Permissions.

Open for use by qualified researchers.