Mapping and Touring Through Photography: On Julius Shulman's Photographic Space of Maslon House

Architectural photography, especially when dealingwith domestic interiors, is a practice of observingand arranging spatial relations of objects. It is also apractice of traveling between the objects and actingon them. The photographer locates the camera/lens,re-arranges the architectonic parts and the movableobjects, and controls and waits for the proper shadows.The moment of activating the shutter is merelythe act of capturing the various features that the photographerhas carefully staged. The photographer, inthis process of making, maps the space by ordering;and tours through the space by entering, turning,and crossing. The viewer’s seeing of the result, thephotograph, is the imaginative experience of his/herpresence, identified with that of the photographer,who observes the space from behind the camera/lens and travels in space with the camera/lens. Inother words, seeing and knowing a space through aphotograph demands our everyday practice of both“mapping (ordering of places)” and “touring (spatializationof actions),” to borrow Michel de Certeau’sterms.1 This study builds on this notion, by drawingattention to a specific case: Julius Shulman’s photographsof Richard Neutra’s Maslon House.

Volume Editors
Ikhlas Sabouni & Jorge Vanegas