My grandfather was born in 1916. He put himself through college taking photos and winning contests with them. He started his post-college mid-war career as an engineer. Working in the Kaiser shipyards in Portland, Oregon he managed to narrowly avoid the draft. After the war he became an architect. Working for himself and with a partner for most of his life. Modernism filled his age. Eames chairs filled his office, or so my mother says. Utility and function met life in his buildings. I have always admired his attention to utility mixed with beauty. My photography and life philosophy are very much inherited from his archetype. Because of this I have found that my attraction to “mid-century modern” architecture has only gotten stronger as I get older.
I have never used a large format camera, unfortunately. But there is a beauty about watching an expert define the motion of film plane in order to bring the lines of an image into symmetry. This was the expert realm of Julius Schulman.
Exploring the world of modern architecture from the immediate post-war years up until the 1970s Shulman defined the mid-century modern style. From architecture to furniture his images epitomized the southern California modernist aesthetic. Visual Acoustics accounts his life's work in a series of vignettes which comprise of an overview of modernism, the rise of the aesthetic on an international scale, his blossoming into the globe's preeminent architectural photographer, and finally into his retirement work with environmental and educational groups.
The interesting philosophical issues which arise out of this documentary are the role of the unification of utility and beauty; the need for a state sponsored emphasis on appropriate land-use policies; and how images of a piece of architecture can not only a movement, but that movement's incorporation of physical space into a philosophical ideal.
Of particular interest to me was the often referenced use of light within these structures. Many modernist architects felt that harmony with nature was crucial to the realization of full utility in which function would define the form of the space. In this way, natural light was often used to ensure that lightbulbs and lamps were only necessary at points of full darkness. Recognition of how a space, especially a domestic one, interacted with the movement of the sun across the horizon was of prime importance. Philosophically, Shulman saw this as the connection between time and space. The movement of the sun defines the movement of time. Even though a single space can be present in various forms throughout its life, the shifting of rays of light from east to west remain as a reminder of the constant procession of time.
The images that Shulman produced in his lifetime were, needless to say, beautiful. Finally I recognized the man behind the images of Brasilia that have captured my imagination since I was a child. Black and white stills with a single vanishing point. Converging lines drawing the eye in. It is remarked by Tom Ford that Shulman was often able to create a more beautiful space in his images than was actually present in the buildings themselves. Playing with light and exposure, dodging the edges of prints, dark red filters, and tilted planes all add up to beautiful and age defining photographs.
The vignette nature of the film means that each piece feels a bit disjointed from the others. Flowing well with the story each section matches nicely, and is coherent. Unfortunately the visual aspects of some of the vignettes appear to be the machinations of a digital video infatuated high-schooler. I remember turning my video black and white, adding grain, and jacking up the contrast for effect. Unfortunately in a film so filled with beautiful images these ploys detract from the overall attractiveness of the movie.
Bad video effects aside, this film raising some serious questions about how we understand who we are. Like much of the design genre it is nice to recognize that we are not who we are simply because we are. Rather we are who we are because someone made an image, maybe not even a fully naturally honest one, to tell us what it means to be a modernist. The clean lines of a single still image might betray the truth of a structure. Although perhaps the clean lines of an image illustrate the truth of physical space better than an architect and observer could ever appreciate. Shulman's images are modernism. Utility and space unite a beautiful function. I think it is a film that my grandfather would appreciate.
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