Photo by Julius Shulman

Did you know that Los Angeles is a glistening, pristine, angular, clean, unpopulated, shining conglomeration of buildings, open-air plazas and rectangular water gardens?

Have you walked amidst those marble palaces of high culture downtown where operas, symphonies, ballet and theater are performed? Have you sipped cocktails outdoors after the valet parked your car in the concrete garage below?

Or have you ascended the steep hill of Bunker, at the apex of downtown, and seen the 60, 70 and 80 story headquarters of the great banks, oil companies, and financial institutions of this sun drenched metropolis?

Were you there when the brave bulldozers came and flattened the 20th Century Fox back lot, the place where Laura Hunt once lived?

Have you restauranted under the curving swoop of the balconies of the Century Plaza Hotel, in a dining room set 30 feet below the sidewalk? Were you served Baked Alaska in a wood paneled, medieval themed restaurant?

Do you remember those great department stores along Wilshire whose names are immortal, never to die: Bullock, May & Co., Desmond’s, Coulter’s ? Gone, all gone. But replaced by newer and better attractions.

The view is NE from the edge of Mulholland in 1970. You are a good friend of Lew and Edie, and here you capture the glory that is Universal City as it stands poised to develop and build what is arguably the most beautiful collection of architecture on Earth. A place so beloved that visitors are honored to be taken by covered carriages to the top of the hill to experience everything that is quintessentially Los Angeles.

Behold the photographs hung here on the white walls of the Central Library’s Getty Gallery! A city so glorious and civic minded that only public relations men and CEO’s can appreciate it.

The sun peeks through enormous cumulus clouds. The conductor and creator and cultural father of LA, Herr Shulman, brings forth drama and contrast of the darkroom chemicals as they fertilize the Zeiss lens and make tangible on the gelatin silver print a 90-year progression, transformation and realization of this most perfect place.

Stage actors are here in one photograph of the yet to be completed 1960s Dorothy Chandler Pavillion. They are posing next to the bulldozers in their costumes. A decisive moment, a true slice of life, now printed for eternity.

And the Case Houses! Oh, the great Case Houses, yes, that one with the cantilevered arms embracing a delicate glass box, perched on the edge of a mountain, overlooking the twinkling city below, as two silk gowned ladies sit along the right angles, legs crossed, relaxed and perhaps dazzled by the city they never walked in just 500 feet below them.

Then there is the mother who mows her grass in front of the A-framed little house with lots of light and lots of appliances. She is happy pushing the manual mower right under the orange tree branch that is held by the photographer’s assistant just outside of camera view. She is radiant.

Mr. Shulman is 97, and his city is everything that his camera has captured, a place of real imaginary grace and beauty.