The Complex Legacy of Julius Shulman

Posted by: Tim Halbur

20 October 2009 - 12:00pm

With a recent documentary, Julius Shulman is back in the spotlight. But the uncritical view of Shulman's legacy leaves a lot out, says Christopher Hawthorne.

The new documentary is called Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman. Christopher Hawthorne says the film is "fizzily honorific."

"...the movie never pauses to consider a pressing, if inconvenient, point: That the very success of Shulman's most famous and reproduced photographs in romanticizing the newly built single-family house also gave a boost to sprawl, freeway construction and the pollution that attends both.

Not everybody can live on a secluded parcel of land in the Hollywood Hills."

Full Story: What the new Julius Shulman documentary leaves out

Source: Los Angeles Times, October 19, 2009