Julius Shulman’s Photography
I’ve said this before as an architectural student, I never really heard of architectural photographers like Julius Shulman until my first lecture. From what I see, its Shulman’s exquisite, coloured photographs that strongly defined the Southern California Modernism.* His photographs look like how the cast of TV show ‘Mad Men’ live in the 1960’s. He viewed a camera as a ‘box with an eye’** that architecture should take control over the photo for the purpose of a photograph to document a story.*** The photographs provide light not only to the domestic living space but the people too. Shulman’s photographs frames with his technique of a domestic environment depicting the form of living specific to its architecture kept architectural photography alive for aspiring students. To test out his ideas, I imitated his technique in such a way that we can see people interacting in their public spaces. Such as students and men smoking, students chatting outside of the Blue Building, library and inside the UTS building, tourists waiting for their buses at a cafe. What relates to Shulman’s photography is that we observe people as the salient objects and how they portray themselves in a specific living space. In this case, the city. I learnt a lot from Shulman than I thought, even I don’t know him personally. What astounds me is his techniques continue to bring architectural photography with overwhelmingly positive reactions from people, critics and famous architects.
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