The Greatest Architecture Photo Ever Taken

The photographer Julius Shulman died this week at age 98, and I think someone should just say it: Julius Shulman was responsible for the greatest architecture photo ever taken.
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The photographer Julius Shulman died this week at age 98, and I think someone should just say it: Julius Shulman was responsible for the greatest architecture photo ever taken.

Who could possibly photograph the soul of Los Angeles? Shulman did, in 1960. On the surface it's a photo of modern glass house -- "Case Study House 22" - cantilevered over the nighttime infinity of the city.

2009-07-17-Shulman.JPG

But it's also a photo of two young women, in cocktail dresses and heels and practiced finishing school poses, who have no idea that their world is about to be rocked - the Sixties were coming, we now know. It was the original Mad Men, only this wasn't television, this was really happening. In a long, remarkable life of his own invention, Shulman documented the entire history of modern California with his camera. But like the Beach Boys, he added something only he saw, creating a California that exists only in the mind. Sometimes it's better that way.

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