Shulman on Lautner

The last of our posts on Julius Shulman: Today, a quote from a Shulman conversation with USC history professor Phil Ethington about his photograph of John Lautner's Malin House, also known as the Chemosphere. (Thanks to the Getty for providing a CD of the Q&A that ran in the GRI gallery during the show.) 

In this passage, Shulman discusses Lautner's house, its role as a (failed) challenge to development-as-usual, and how he took the photo. (While we think of Shulman as a photographer of strict, sometimes cold modernist architecture, whenever he could Shulman placed shrubbery or trees in the foreground of his photos, as if to soften structures.)

"John Lautner had been associated with FLW for many years and when he pursued his own practice in the 1960s he designed this house in the Hollywood Hills overlooking the San Fernando Valley. But John Lautner had this concept [of] angrily denying the rights of developers from bulldozing land just for the sake of making a flat path for a lot. He said let’s not disturb the terrain, let's recognize and honor the native quality of the Hollywood-type hills overlooking the San Fernando Valley. Let us show that we can build a house by excavating just a pod of cement and concrete and support the house by a unique construction, by a single column without excavating the whole piece of property.

"He was hoping he can get builders in the area to design the house and build it with him, which would exercise the openness of the property, the views from the property. At twilight even in daytime towards the San Gabriel Mountains is spectacular...

"This house was constructed in the factory with steel framework holding the house and the floor. You see the steel members supported by a single concrete column. It’s a sound structure, it’s been there for many years, over 45 years now.

"You will notice in this photograph that there is a cloud shadow floating across the valley below the house in the distance. The exercising of this point of visual perception in the part of the photographer makes this photograph successful. I had noticed as I was preparing this photograph that there were cloud shadows floating across the sky, sweeping across the valley. And just as I was ready to photograph this scene, the sunlight below the house, I saw a shadow coming towards the valley below the structure of the house in the distance, and being swept by the winds in exactly the right position I needed it to delineate the form of the house."

Related: Another reason to spotlight Shulman on Lautner: The UCLA Hammer Museum is preparing a Lautner retrospective for 2007ish. The John Lautner Foundation has more photos of the house, including one by Shulman in color.