Ready for a close-up

IT’S 10 a.m. in Los Feliz. Marvin Rand, a small, dapper man, adjusts his tripod and Swiss-made Sinar camera, then takes a few gazelle-like leaps down a steep hill, where he will capture the essence of a house from behind and below it.

Rand, 80, is doing the photos as a favor for longtime friend Realtor Crosby Doe. It’s one of dozens of activities that pack his schedule, taking time from what some say he ought to be doing at this stage of life: talking and writing about his amazing body of photographic work, which documents 55 years of Los Angeles architectural history.

In the rarefied field of architectural photography, Rand is one of a handful of masters who have perfected both the art and the craft. Any good photographer can record the outlines of a building. The great ones capture emotion and insight; their photos reveal a dimension and beauty that most people wouldn’t notice even if they were at the structure, seeing it with their own eyes.

In his spare, whitewashed Venice studio, Rand stores thousands of unique images of 20th century California structures -- many of them now gone or long since redesigned; some of them iconic landmarks that have symbolized this city for the rest of the world.

He has documented the birth of such projects as the Salk Institute in La Jolla, amassed what some consider the finest photo collection of work by Greene & Greene, and once spent five years shooting the Watts Towers, grid by grid. He has been awarded and honored, his photos published around the world.

But despite all this, Rand has lived almost his entire professional life in the shadow of a man born 15 years before him, the architectural photographer Julius Shulman. Shulman’s photos of postwar Modern dwellings helped put California architecture on the map. He is celebrated, a star, a name known in art as well as architecture circles.

By contrast, Rand has something of an image problem. “Who’s Marvin Rand?” asks a former photo curator at one of L.A.’s major museums. The question is echoed by others who may know Rand’s name, but say they’re not all that familiar with his work. Arthur Ollman, director of San Diego’s Museum of Photographic Arts, suggests in jest that “Rand has played Salieri to Shulman’s Mozart.”

That may soon change. Rand has decided that after decades of being “relatively silent,” it’s time for him to “come out.” With three books soon to be published, he could undergo something of a revival even before he’s felt the first flush of fame.

The first, “Greene & Greene” (publication date Sept. 15), is devoted to Rand’s loving documentation of early Pasadena Craftsman homes built by brothers Charles and Henry Greene. (Rand has done three books on their work since 1959, but he calls this the most lavish.)

Scheduled for fall 2006 is his book on another early California architect, Irving J. Gill, whom Rand calls “the world’s first Modernist” -- a genius ignored by developers who preferred buildings with “curlicues.”

The third and possibly most historically important volume will be a biography and retrospective of the entire body of Rand’s work; its publication date is not set. All will be published by Gibbs Smith.

Rand is “unique -- one of the great architectural photographers of the century,” says Robert H. Timme, dean of the USC School of Architecture. “He has a wonderful sense of light and mood, which only the great ones have.”

Rand may not be famous, Timme says, because he hasn’t “taken the time to put together a book of his contributions -- not just photos, but also his theories and beliefs. He’s got to talk about all that. His work needs to be recognized for its excellence.”

In fact, few people outside the architecture community have heard of Rand. Those who know of him tend to lump him with Shulman -- as if the two were contemporaries and as if comparisons must be made.

“We are not contemporaries,” Rand insists. “Shulman is 15 years older and started photographing in the ‘30’s. I didn’t start until the ‘50s -- after college and the Army and a few years of other work. So while we photographed some of the same things, I come at it from a totally different place. There is no similarity between us.”

Rand, an Art Center College of Design graduate, is a hands-on perfectionist who knows what he wants and feels he has to do it all himself to get it right. He doesn’t employ any staff or assistants.

He travels solo, takes all his own photographs and produces them in his studio with his “own little hands.” He says he finds it difficult to sell himself as if he were a product rather than an artist.

Shulman, in contrast, has always utilized assistants to help with photography and photo processing. He calls himself a world class “merchandiser” of his work, constantly expanding and cross-propagating his web of contacts to get maximum mileage from his talents.

Rand refuses to spend time schmoozing up the press, even if it can boost his public profile. In fact, he seems a bit intolerant of those who don’t know as much as he’d like them to. It’s impossible during an interview to tell whether Rand is hoarding his erudite architectural thoughts until someone more worthy of them comes along, or if he finds it difficult to discuss things.

And Rand certainly doesn’t spend time gabbing on the phone. “We called you two days in a row at all your numbers, and you never answered anywhere,” a visitor chided him recently. He shrugs. “I was busy, I guess.”

Rand’s client list (and photo archive) dates back to when he first started documenting work by Charles Eames, Cesar Pelli, Louis I. Kahn, Craig Ellwood, Victor Gruen and Frank Gehry, to name a few. With his energies undiminished, he continued to expand his repertoire throughout four marriages (he was twice widowed), three children and two open-heart surgeries.

Rand has focused on what he calls “cutting edge architecture,” the work of younger people who he believes will become even greater as they mature. Of course, you might not think those young ones would want to hire an octogenarian to preserve their work for posterity. You’d be wrong.

“There’s no one younger than Marvin Rand,” says Los Angeles architect Michele Saee, 47. “He has the freshest eye I know of. I actually love the way he looks at things.” Saee says he started working with Rand 20 years ago as an apprentice at Morphosis and hasn’t stopped since: “He is a gem.”

What’s more, Saee says, “Rand has documented a large body of architectural work that doesn’t exist any more, from a time when Los Angeles architecture wasn’t considered worth documenting, when the emphasis was all on the East Coast. Now, of course, it all has shifted to the West. And Rand possesses what no one else may have: work from the ‘70s, ‘80s and early ‘90s -- by people like Thom Mayne and Eric Moss and much more.”

Architect Lawrence Scarpa of Pugh + Scarpa says: “Marvin shot the very first project we ever did [1991], and he still shoots every one of them. He has an incredible eye, and captures the very essence of a place. The spirit and soul. That’s something you can’t teach a photographer. It’s in them or it’s not. Maybe it’s because he really loves architecture; it’s all he ever wants to talk about. He’s like a walking encyclopedia.”

Rand also is “amazingly energetic” and up to date: “Think about it: Here’s a guy who was in his mid-70s and decides he’s going digital. He’s as current technologically speaking as any photographer out there.”

San Diego museum director Ollman says he’s not familiar with the body of Rand’s work. “But when we first built the museum in 1983, Rand did images of the interior and exterior of the building. We’ve really loved those pictures. We’ve used them for years and years. They gave the viewer the experience of standing inside those spaces. That doesn’t happen easily, or with every good photographer.

“Rand made it possible to feel what the space feels like, the visceral sense of being able to enter into it. We were a brand new institution and had to establish credibility around the world. His photos were extremely helpful in doing that.”

Rand, asked in an interview to describe his process, or how he thinks about his work, looks befuddled. “I can’t tell you. It’s intuitive. It’s something inside that tells me it’s right or it’s wrong.”

He switched to architectural photography from advertising in the mid-’50s after the well-known architectural critic and historian Esther McCoy became his mentor and introduced him to the field and many important architects of the era.

Rand says he has no photographic rules. He sometimes photographs buildings in the rain or fog “because it’s sensuous” and believes “every building has its own personality and individuality.” Then he thinks a minute and modifies that statement.

“The developers have ruined all that. They multiply the same exterior over and over again. And it happens that they’ve latched onto this same pathetic Mediterranean style, which is wrong for California. We’ve been blessed over the years with great architects like Neutra, Schindler, Gill, Gehry, Thom Mayne and more. Right after World War II we had an abundance of creative architecture here in Southern California. But no one listened. We needed to create our own identity and move architecture forward. And that’s not being done. It’s all this ugly Mediterranean. Don’t ask me to photograph one of those. Not for any money in the world. I will not do it.”

The truth is, Rand would rather be taking pictures than doing anything else, except spending time with his wife of 15 years, Mary Ann. (The couple just came back from a trip to Israel and Jordan with 1,700 new Rand images.) Or remodeling his daughter’s house, which he says he’s “come up with a great plan for.”

Of course, he would like his images and reputation to carry forward, “to last just a little bit beyond” him, but so far he hasn’t found much time to try to make it happen.

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Bettijane Levine can be reached at home@latimes.com