BY JIM FARBER>LA.COM

At 97, Julius Shulman, whom Ansel Adams affectionately referred to as "The Ansel Adams of architectural photography," is the man of the moment. And he's enjoying every minute of it.

Riding the crest of a worldwide reappraisal of modernist architecture, Shulman, who emerged as the movement's most eloquent photographer, finds himself directly in the spotlight. At the same time, his 70-plus years of photographing the architecture of Los Angeles have made him the city's pre-eminent documentarian.

Last Saturday, the Los Angeles Public Library (in collaboration with the Getty Research Institute) unveiled a major new exhibition, "Julius Shulman's Los Angeles," featuring 150 large-scale reproductions from Shulman's vast archive of prints and negatives that reside at the Getty Center in Brentwood.

The same week, Taschen, the iconoclastic German publishing house, released a 1,000-page, three-volume survey of his work, "Julius Shulman: Modernism Rediscovered."

From his landmark home/studio in the Hollywood Hills (designed in 1950 by Raphael Soriano), Shulman, despite his age, continues to work at a Herculean pace.

His dog-eared desk calendar is filled with requests for interviews and guest appearances. He's involved with several other book projects, including a children's book about houses around the world, and he continues to collaborate on assignments, most recently photographing the restoration and redesign of the Griffith Observatory.

Shulman says he's been deluged with calls from around the world.

"That was Portugal," he says, apologizing for the interruption. Later, "That was from Germany." Next it's a call about a black-tie reception for Shulman in New York. "Oh," he adds, "and did I tell you, KCET was here this morning?"

Stooped and frail though he may be, Shulman's mind, spirit and memories remain as sharp as the photographs that made him famous. His recollections of the events and people that shaped his life remain vibrantly clear, along with his feelings about Los Angeles, the city he adopted in 1920 at age 10.

The studio is a perfect reflection of Shulman himself.

Its bookshelves are filled. A bevy of awards are spread out on top of a cabinet. A well-worn classic bentwood chair designed by Charles Eames dominates one corner next to a table stacked with books and calendars that, Shulman points out, are all for sale.

The cash lies paper-clipped on his desktop next to the enormous boxed set of his new Taschen book. And when the conversation turns to his earliest days in Los Angeles, Shulman delightedly whips out the original Vestpocket Kodak camera he used to take those first photographs.

It was this camera, he says, that on March 5, 1936, took the six shots of Richard Neutra's Kun House in Hollywood that launched his career.

"The next thing I know, the telephone rings," he says. It was the architect's assistant, explaining that " `Mr. Neutra saw your photographs and was so taken by them, he wants 10 prints of each. And he'd like to meet you,"' Shulman recalls.

There are moments in life, Shulman reflects, where everything comes together, where you are in the right place at exactly the right moment. That was his moment. And to commemorate it, from then on he annotated the six photographs as "March 5, 1936. The day I became a photographer."

For the next 70 years, Shulman photographed an endless succession of assignments for magazines and newspapers, including his famous documentation of the Case Study House project commissioned by John Entenza, publisher of Art & Architecture magazine.

It was that assignment that produced Shulman's iconic Los Angeles photograph of two elegant ladies above the city lights in the cantilevered living room of Pierre Koenig's Case Study House 22.

Using a 4-by-5-inch Swiss-made Sinar camera, Shulman became a master of view camera techniques. He also developed his signature seamless flow of interior and exterior lighting, and mastered film development (including the use of black-and-white infrared) and the skills of darkroom printing. In 1962, he wrote the definitive book on the subject, "Photographing Architecture and Interiors."

It was Shulman's desire to master the art of "painting with light," he says, that drew him to the work (and technical writing) of Ansel Adams.

"Ansel and I became very good friends," says Shulman, an avid nature lover, hiker and former Boy Scout who met Adams during a visit to Yosemite.

"When we got into talking about our respective work, we discovered we were kindred spirits. That's when he chuckled and said, `Julius, you are the Ansel Adams of architectural photography.' When he asked if I would like to teach a seminar at Yosemite, I suggested we call it `The Architecture of Nature.' And Ansel said, `What could be better?' Two of the photographs I did on that trip are on the wall in my bedroom."

They are pure landscapes — not a building in sight.

Jim Farber, (310) 540-5511 Ext. 416

Images from top, Julius Shulman in his Hollywood Hills home studio with his original Kodak Vest Pocket camera by Robert Casillas>LA.COM, and from the Julius Shulman photos in the exhibit, a newsstand, another L.A. art deco icon, the famed image of Case Study No. 22, and another deco landmark (can you tell the caption information was ... nonexistant?). Below, Angels Flight and the Mark Taper Forum.