Visual Acoustics

Visual Acoustics is a documentary about the life and career of Julius Shulman, one of the world’s leading architectural photographer of the 20th century. Shulman brought the images of modern architecture to the American mainstream. His images played a major role in crafting the image of the Los Angeles and Southern California lifestyle to the rest of the nation and world during the 1950s and 1960s.

Shulman is best known for his photograph titled “Case Study House #22” also known as The Stahl House, a modernist styled house in the Hollywood Hills section of Los Angeles, California that was designed by Pierre Koenig. Shulman’s photo showing two women leisurely sitting at a corner of the house with a panoramic view of the city through the floor to ceiling glass walls at night. The house then has become famous and was used in numerous fashion shoots, ad campaigns and at least five films.

Each Shulman image unites perception and understanding for the buildings and their place in the landscape. The precise compositions reveal not just the architectural ideas behind a building’s surface. A sense of humanity is always present in his work, even when the human figure is absent from the actual photographs.

Shulman died at his home in Los Angeles, California on Wednesday, July 15, 2009; he was 98 years old.

Visual Acoustics is the first and one of the eight films showing at A Design Film Festival Bangkok edition, during 22 – 28 November 2010 at SF World Cinema, Central World.