Michael Stern Presents Shulman’s Palm Springs
By Mike Tauber
“We are born and live our entire lives in architecture — yet we ignore so much of it,” said artist, curator, author and film producer Michael Stern. “I want to reveal the language of architecture to the layman, and make it accessible to everyone.”
Stern co-authored a photograph book, Julius Shulman: Palm Springs, and directed a companion documentary about desert-modern architecture. The documentary is a must-see for anyone who’s ever been, or will be going, to Palm Springs.
The book and documentary feature a selection of stills by the iconic architectural photographer Shulman, who died in 2009 at age 98. Sterns book focuses exclusively on Shulman’s photos of modernist properties in Palm Springs, and it is organized in order of the 15 architects who designed the properties. More than 60 buildings are presented, many owned by celebrities.
Renowned author and architectural historian Alan Hess helped co-write the book with Stern and contributed to the descriptive accuracy of the architects and featured subjects. “We clustered the text and kept it to a minimum,” said Stern. “The book is mostly a pictorial experience of Julius. I wanted readers to hear his voice through the pictures. Julius loved, loved, loved Palm Springs.”
Stern and his partner, David Martin, originally settled in Palm Springs in 2001 after living in New York. He earned his bachelor’s in fine art at the University of Buffalo, and went on to Rutgers to complete his master’s degree in photography. An artist all his life, Stern has seen great success as both a ceramicist and in his own professional work as a fine-art photographer.
Immersing himself in the Palm Springs cultural scene, Stern joined the Art Museum and served both as a city arts commissioner and a member of the Palm Springs Modernism Committee. Nicknamed “Mod Com,” the local nonprofit’s mission is to provide education on and preserve Palm Springs’ notable collection of modernist buildings by internationally renowned architects.
While organizing the Mod Com website, Stern researched photographic archives of Palm Springs properties and discovered many unpublished and rarely seen images by Shulman. Stern gathered the archives and went on to do presentations for an ever-expanding audience with an insatiable appetite for everything modern.
Around this time, architect E. Stewart Williams (now deceased) approached Stern. Williams is behind numerous iconic landmarks in Palm Springs. “[Williams] offered me better photos than I had been using,” said Stern. The meeting proved to be a turning point for Stern’s future. “I decided I would do a book about Williams’ work”.
The next step was to contact Shulman and get permission to use his photos. “I looked in the phone book. He was listed. I called him up and went to his house,” said Stern. He became immediate friends with Shulman, who was 91 at the time. “I really bond with people from that era, and he was sharp as a tack.”
Stern pitched the Williams book to publishers, but there were no takers, he said. The museum, however, had plans to develop a Shulman photographic exhibition, and Stern was in the right place at the right time. “They accepted me as curator, along with all my ideas,” he said.
These ideas included having backlit transparencies, colored exhibit walls in the “butterfly roof” shape and architectural models so people could understand what they were seeing in the photos. The book was released in February 2009 to coincide with the exhibition opening. As testament to Stern’s efforts, the museum saw record-breaking numbers both in exhibition attendance, as well as book and companion DVD sales. Audiences at the exhibit embraced the DVD, which was executive produced by David Martin.
“I realized it was the celebrity houses that really drew people in,” said Stern. “They respond to names like the Annenburg, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Dinah Shore and Bob Hope.”
The DVD is essentially a series of stills from the book, said Stern. “We animated it by panning and other effects,” he added. “The J. Paul Getty trust provided extremely high-resolution photos, allowing us to zoom in on detail not visible in regular eyesight.” Narrated by Stern, Hess and Shulman, the DVD features one of the last voiceovers by Shulman.
Julius Shulman: Palm Springs airs on Feb. 11 at 8:30 p.m. on KCET public television in all Southern California markets, and again on Feb. 14 on KCET in the desert cities. The public may purchase tickets through KCET to a reception celebrating the airing of the DVD. The event, a kick-off of Palm Springs Modernism Week, takes place on Feb. 11at the Frank Sinatra house. Tickets also are available at www.modernismweek.com.
To purchase Sterns book or DVD, visit the Palm Springs Visitors Center on Highway 111 at Tramway Road, the gift shop at the Palm Springs Art Museum or Just Fabulous in downtown Palm Springs. To purchase online, go to www.PSModCom.com or Amazon Books.
To view Stern’s photography, visit www.MichaelSternArt.com.