GETTY ACQUIRES JULIUS SHULMAN’S PHOTO ARCHIVE

The life work of photographer Julius Shulman -- whose best-known pictures define Southern California’s classic Modernist architecture -- has found a home at the Getty Center. The J. Paul Getty Trust announced Monday that it has acquired Shulman’s vast archive and installed it at the Getty Research Institute in Brentwood. The trove of more than 260,000 negatives, prints and transparencies, spanning the 94-year-old artist’s career, makes the Getty a leading center for the study of 20th century architecture through photography.

“This is an incredible resource for people who want to study the history of modern architecture in Southern California and beyond,” said Wim de Wit, head of special collections at the institute. “There are so many of these buildings that we can only think of through Julius Shulman.”

Arthur Ollman, director of the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, called Shulman “the king of California architecture photography,” who captured the elegance and clean perfection of Modernism while making the buildings look comfortable. “Nobody did it better than Shulman,” he said, “and likely nobody will.”

The Getty purchased the archive for an undisclosed sum, prevailing over four other suitors: the Huntington Library, UCLA, USC and the Library of Congress.

“It’s not a matter of the value of the archive,” said Shulman, recounting a decade of talks about the fate of his artistic legacy. “It’s a matter of how it is going to be used. The Getty is really going to put my 68-year archive to work in educational programs, publications and exhibitions.” Shulman also said he wanted the archive to remain in Los Angeles, where he has lived throughout his career.

The first show from the archive, a celebration of the Getty’s coup and the photographer’s 95th birthday, will open in October at the research institute’s gallery. Documenting the career of a self-taught artist who said he was “lucky to be doing the right thing in the right place at the right time,” the exhibition will encompass Shulman’s relatively little-known images of Southern California gas stations, movie palaces and shopping malls, as well as his trademark pictures of buildings by seminal Modernist architects such as Richard Neutra, Rudolf M. Schindler, Frank Lloyd Wright, Gregory Ain, John Lautner and Pierre Koenig.

“People did not think of Los Angeles as a cultural center when Julius began taking these pictures,” De Wit said. “But he did believe that. Of course he had a business, but he went out on job after job and showed it in the best light possible.”

One of Shulman’s contributions, Ollman said, was to “identify Southern California as a place where sophistication was possible.”

Thomas Crow, director of the research institute, said that Shulman’s body of work enhances the Getty’s stature as an essential resource for researchers and historians in the fields of art, architecture and urban design. The archive complements an international holding that includes French photographer Lucien Herve’s images of Le Corbusier’s architecture and many materials on California Modernism.

Calling the acquisition a “natural” turn of events, Crow said that the Getty has “a double aspect, as one of the premier cultural institutions of Los Angeles and one that has sought from the outset to be international in its outlook and importance. The Shulman collection, as much as anything else we have, emphasizes that California was a place where something of major international significance took place. It was the incubator for the continuation of European Modernism.” Shulman’s work will help scholars gain a deeper understanding of the architects’ work, he said, and possibly “galvanize public awareness of the need to preserve it.”

De Wit added that the archive also will promote a better understanding of the history of architectural photography and the relationship between architects and their chosen photographers. “It’s a delicate balance. Something like the relationship between a composer and the conductor of an orchestra.”

Shulman, who said in a 2000 interview that he “went to university for seven years, never majored in anything” and never graduated, met Neutra in 1936 after taking a snapshot of one of his buildings. The encounter led to a long relationship that provided an introduction to other Modernists and what became Shulman’s signature work. Shulman grew up in Connecticut and was twice married and twice widowed. He continues to live in the landmark Hollywood Hills house and studio designed for him by Raphael Soriano in the 1950s.

The Getty’s success in landing the archive had a lot to do with having the ability to make it available quickly, De Wit said. “What we can offer is a good system and the funds to support it. The archive won’t be in the attic for 20 years. Processing it is a huge amount of work, but by early April we will be able to help researchers. The work won’t be finished, but the archive will be accessible.”

The materials transported from Shulman’s home to the Getty Center include 36,000 vintage 8-by-10-inch prints, 6,000 newer 8-by-10-inch prints, 78,000 vintage 4-by-5-inch prints and tens of thousands of negatives and color transparencies. Shulman carefully documented all his work, De Wit said, but each print must be put in a new acid-free envelope and each slide remounted.

It’s all part of the work that goes on in the library of the research facility established in 1982 with the fortune of oil baron J. Paul Getty. With an annual operating budget of $44.6 million, the institute is charged with furthering new knowledge in the visual arts and providing intellectual leadership through research, publications, public programs and exhibitions.

The institute’s library was founded with a collection of 40,000 books and 100,000 photographs compiled at the original Getty Museum on the edge of Malibu. The collection now encompasses more than 800,000 books, periodicals and auction catalogs; about 2 million study photographs of art and architecture; and special collections of rare books, prints, maps, optical devices, manuscripts and archival materials.

Shulman said that he couldn’t be more pleased to have his work incorporated into that collection. But he’s already involved in his next project: putting all his slides in order so that they can join his archive at the Getty.

“It’s the most amazing thing,” he said. “After all these years, I’ve never been so active and so happy. And it’s getting better every day. I’m working on lectures and books. And now I have a permanent meal ticket at the Getty.”