Julius Shulman, Modernism Rediscovered [Hardcover]

A fittingly huge tribute to the man who captured Modernism in western America and especially in California. I thought the beauty of these three large books (check out the weight and dimensions in the Product Details section) was the way they are organized: historically using Shulman's own job reference numbers. Obviously there is not going to be a photo of every commission because a lot of his time was spent on what he calls 'bread and butter work'. So book 1 starts with #0003 in 1939 with Gregory Ain's Scheyer residence in LA and book 3 ends in 1981 with #5976 Augustin Hernandez's studio in Mexico City. Although Shulman is working again, with German photographer Juergen Nogai, the contents of the three books are based on the 250,000 negatives he presented to the Getty Research Institute upon retiring in 2004.

I get the impression looking through the pages that there maybe more interior photos than exteriors and what a visual treat these interiors are. In photo after photo there is a sense of spaciousness so typical of most modernist houses and many of the shots show how rooms extend into other living areas.

The interiors from the Forties to the late Seventies also yield a fascinating opportunity to study the furniture and fittings the owners thought would work well in a modern home. Because of the large page size some of these domestic interior photos are twenty-three inches wide on a spread so the detail is amazing. Another interesting point about a Shulman photo is the addition of people in his work. Apparently frowned upon by architects in the past he took the view that it was an opportunity to reduce the purity (and possibly elitism) of Modernism in a domestic setting.

Apart from all the great home photos, commercial work includes: corporate headquarters of large companies, schools, research facilities, banks, retail units and restaurants. The same sense of space and depth comes across in these images and I think you'll come to the same conclusion as I did about Shulman's photography: that he always managed to frame his compositions to captured the spatial essence of a building.

The production of the three books is exemplary as you would expect from Taschen. The hundreds of photos are printed on quality paper with a 200dpi screen and presented in an elegant but simple layout. Each featured commission has between one and six photos with a short piece of background copy. All of this is a wonderful tribute to a remarkable architectural photographer. I know I'll be enjoying these three books for a long, long time.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

UPDATE Taschen have issued Shulman's work in different editions but with the same title. Check out the ISBN, page numbers and size in Product Details.

Well Taschen does it again -- reissues a book with exactly the same title as a previous book, and reduces the number of pages dramatically. The format is bigger than the previous edition, but the pages have merely been enlarged, with no additional content on each page. So the loss of 160 pages means you are missing many many examples of modern architecture that were previously included. Very disappointing. Also, be aware that there is yet another group of 3 volumes by the same title. Many of the reviews posted here refer to the very expensive 3 volume set. It is very confusing that Taschen publishes multiple books with the same title, but with different content. I recently bought the current edition of Fantasy Worlds, also published by Taschen, only to discover that it too had been trimmed by more than 100 pages.

I live overseas and I was worried about the weight and size of these books... I will say one thing: worth every inch and every pound, Julius Shulman's photographs get better with every inch.

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