Julius Shulman, 10/10/1910-7/15/2009

Photo by Gerard Smulevich courtesy of "Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman"

Julius Shulman was passionate about his work.

Many of those close to Julius Shulman gathered in a theater at Edwards Island Cinemas in Newport Beach in April to pay tribute to the Los Angeles photographer and subject of the documentary love letter Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman. One of those closest to the 98-year-old in his later years, Rose Nielsen of the Woodbury Institute, told those who'd just watched the Newport Beach Film Festival entry (and later NBFF Outstanding Achievement in Documentary Filmmaking honoree), "He has an amazing mind. He's like a walking history book of LA."

And now he's gone, as reported in today's Los Angeles Times obituary.

Born in Brooklyn on 10/10/10, Shulman got into the ground floor of architectural modernism that sprang up in California in the 1930s by photographing the creations of Richard Neutra, Rudolh Schindler, Frank Lloyd Wright, Harwell Hamilton Harris and even some architects you haven't heard of. As demonstrated in Eric Bricker's film debut, Shulman was also a cut-up, a passionate artist and a staunch protector of the Southern California landscape.

Besides Bricker and Nielsen, the screening brought actress Kelly Lynch, who hosted Shulman's 95th birthday in her Neutra home, appeared in the doc and shared with the festival audience warm stories about the photographer, who besides well-designed buildings apparently had a thing for the female form. Shulman, who'd been in poor health for years, could not make the trip to OC. That's okay; everyone knew him well by the end of the event.

Orange County Museum of Art and NBFF present another screening of Visual Acoustics at the museum on Sept. 24.