SHELF LIFE
Houses: InsIde, outsIde and all around
By Sandy McLendon
Tim Street-Porter’s L.A. Modern (Rizzoli International Publications,
hardcover, $75.00, 248 pages, 240 color illustrations) resembles a
coffee-table book, but it isn’t really; it’s a valentine to a city with which
the photographer is madly, dizzyingly in love. Street-Porter, who is a
long way from his native Britain, lost his heart to Los Angeles many
years ago, and it shows. His sumptuous, saturated, crystalline images
of the best modernist residential architecture in the city are the archi-
tectural-photography equivalent of George Hurrell’s famed glamour
shots of Hollywood stars, photographs that communicate not only an
idealized beauty, but their creator’s love of the subject, too. Structures
so often photographed as to be almost wearyingly familiar, such as
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House (1924), become fresh and vital
again when seen through Street-Porter’s lens; the photographer is able
to communicate not only the oft-seen monumental quality of its exte-
rior, but the gentle melancholy of its interiors as well. His photographs
of Richard Neutra’s Singleton House (1959) show how the structure’s
Mulholland Drive acreage and extraordinary views made its design
inevitable. Tim Street-Porter has undertaken the task of writing his
book’s text to excellent effect: his architectural connoisseurship and
his knowledge of his adopted city spill from every page. An introduc-
tion by New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff is written
with his customary insight and lapidary precision.
During much of the midcentury era, a certain kind of decorating
was in vogue: glamorous and highly keyed, mixing modernist and
traditional elements, sometimes with abandon. After much focus on
Left Frank Lloyd Wright, Ennis House (1924). Photograph by
Tim Street-Porter.
Below Richard Neutra, Singleton House (1959). Photograph by
Tim Street-Porter.
88 www.modernismmagazine.com
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