In 2000, TASCHEN released Modernism Rediscovered, a series of photographs drawn from photographer Julius Schulman’s personal archives. The collection brought to light for the first time forgotten architectural masterpieces from California’s Modernist period and transported a West Coast dream around the world. His bold, striking images of mid-century, Southern Californian architecture captured not only the distinctive structural, functional, and design elements of a building but also the context of its surroundings and inhabitants in a holistic, evocative sense of lifestyle. Over time, Shulman’s talents would take him around the world, allowing him to craft one of the most compelling chronologies of modern architecture.
This extensive three-volume follow up to the 2000 release features over 400 architectural treasures from the Shulman archives, each photograph personally selected from over 260,000 photographs over a two-year period by publisher Benedikt Taschen. The images featured span the West Coast as well as the rest of the United States, Mexico, Israel, and Hong Kong, all captured with Shulman’s signature clarity and supreme sense of composition. Modernism Rediscovered not only provides readers with a glimpse into architectural ideas and the understanding of a building with its place in the landscape, it also reveals visions of the larger project of modernism, including new ideas about domestic living. It’s no surprise the Shulman was instrumental in crafting the image of the midcentury Southern California lifestyle across the United States and around the world.