Julius Shulman. Modernism Rediscovered

The photography of Julius Shulman (1910–2009) transported a West Coast dream around the world. His images of midcentury Southern Californian architecture captured not only the distinctive structural, functional, and design elements of a building but also the context of its surroundings and inhabitants in a holistic, evocative sense of lifestyle. Over time, Shulman’s talents would take him around the world, steadily crafting one of the most compelling chronologies of modern architecture.

Offering an immense cultural cache for an even lower price, this fresh edition of TASCHEN’s Modernism Rediscovered features over 400 architectural treasures from the Shulman archives. Each project and photograph was personally selected from over 260,000 photographs by publisher Benedikt Taschen, who enjoyed a close relationship with Shulman and his work since first publishing Julius Shulman: Architecture and Its Photography (1998). Documenting the reach of modernist aesthetics, the projects span not only the West Coast but also the rest of the United States, as well as Mexico, Israel, and Hong Kong, all captured with Shulman’s characteristic understanding of space and situation, as well as his brilliant and intuitive sense of composition.

The pictures are contextualized with an introduction by photography critic Owen Edwards, an extensive biography by University of Southern California historian Philip J. Ethington, captions on decorative elements by Los Angeles Modern Auctions founder Peter Loughrey, and biographies of key architects. In addition, the book includes personal reflections from Shulman himself, with an oral history and portrait of the period crafted via months of interviews with arts writer Hunter Drohojowska-Philp.