This doco about veteran photographer Julius Shulman is a treasure trove of modernist architectural eye-candy, a coffee table book come to life. “Nirvana for lovers of mid-century modern and fine-art photography.” — Variety
This is nirvana for lovers of mid-century modern and fine-art photography.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2009
Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman 2008
This documentary is a treasure trove of modernist architectural eyecandy, like a Taschen coffee table book come to life. ‘Visual acoustics’ is a coinage of photographer Julius Shulman, and the film is a celebration of his decades of work shooting architecture. Shulman was so intimately connected and concerned with promoting the homes created by the great American modernists (Wright, Gehry, Neutra et al.) that the film doubles as a celebration of that entire era, one which he was arguably pivotal in defining. Most architecture films tend to focus on the contemporary creation of large public buildings. Visual Acoustics takes the opposite approach and is all the better for it: it takes us into domestic spaces and talks with the people who have lived in them for decades. Shulman, a spry nonagenarian, has maintained long-term relationships with the architects and the owners of the homes he documented and he gives us a privileged entrée to the kind of iconic houses most of us can only dream about. — AL