Brand Library to screen cinematic tribute to architectural photographer Julius Shulman

For most of the 20th century, Los Angeles didn’t need to advertise its virtues to the rest of the country; the motion picture industry did that quite well. But San Francisco was always seen as California’s premier city.

It wasn’t until the post-war period that L.A. came into its own as a showplace for cutting-edge architecture. No one advanced that idea more strikingly than photographer Julius Shulman.

Director Eric Bricker’s loving 2008 cinematic valentine to the photographer, “Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman,” screens Thursday at Glendale’s Brand Library & Art Center. With narration by Dustin Hoffman and spoken tributes from architects Frank Gehry and Ray Kappe, the documentary shows Shulman (1910-2009) to be modest toward his genius and sunny in his disposition.

Shulman’s iconic photographs of Mid-Century Modernist homes — designed by the likes of Pierre Koenig, John Lautner and Charles and Ray Eames — showed good contemporary design in the most flattering ways possible.

The Shulman “home portraits” depicted elegant structures with relaxed inhabitants set amid a city coming into its own as a world center for art and design.

Arts & Architecture magazine actively promoted the idea that good, modern home design could be smart, functional and affordable. Its Case Study program sponsored architects to design with industrial materials.

Shulman’s celebrated photo of Case Study 22, the home of Buck and Carlotta Stahl in L.A., peers in on two young women inside the furnished corner of the glass-walled house. Steel beams support the foundation overhang, which juts over a hillside — overlooking the glittering, nighttime L.A.

“That picture is the perfect confluence of artistry, optimism and potential,” said Bricker, a St. Louis native who lives in Austin, Texas. “It’s one of the most iconic images of L.A. and, to me, it says: We can achieve.”

Bricker worked as a photo consultant when he was introduced to the elderly Shulman in the spring of 1999. “

That day changed my life,” Bricker said. “I saw his photos and a whole new world opened up. The work was fascinating, but Julius himself reminded me of my maternal grandfather’s family — Russian-Jewish and very down-to-earth.”

Their friendship blossomed. “I loved going up there,” Bricker said, “and spending time with Julius. In fast-paced L.A., his internal tempo was definitely down-shifted.”

Bricker came away with a New Year’s resolution for 2002: “I said, ‘Somebody should make a movie…I should make a movie.’”

Shulman was an optimistic person, Bricker said. “His family moved to L.A. when he was 10, and so he understood the light in the city and how it changed in the various parts of town. The Stahl photos are at just the right moment when the lights were going on in the basin.”

It was Shulman’s photographs — crisp, simplified and understated — that both informed Bricker’s vision for the documentary, and gave it a standard.

“I wanted to produce a piece of work that was on the same par as what Julius did. It had to be well done,” Bricker said.

Documentary filmmakers fight long, lonely battles to see their projects to fruition.

“The hardest part was funding,” Bricker said. “Even though I had some sleepless nights and some dark moments, there was never any question that I would finish it.”

Shulman himself was a big help to Bricker. “He was key to our success,” Bricker affirmed. “Any house we wanted to film in and any designer we wanted on-camera — Julius had their address and number in his Rolodex. And people were only too happy to open up their homes to him.”

“I call him the eternal Eagle Scout,” Bricker said, laughing. “Julius was an actual Eagle Scout — he loved nature, and I saw him as an example of everlasting youth.”

“Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman” will be shown at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Brand Library & Art Center, 1601 W. Mountain Road, Glendale.

For more informaion, call (818) 548-2051 or visit www.brandlibrary.org.

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KIRK SILSBEE writers about jazz and culture for Times Community News.