Picturing Modern Architecture: Photographer Willard Morgan and Richard Neutra’s Lovell House

Abstract

As with much twentieth-century modernist architecture, the buildings of Richard Neutra (1892–1970) have achieved worldwide renown chiefly through the writings of critics and historians and the published images of his work by architectural photographers. The most noted of Neutra’s photographers was Julius Shulman (1910–2009), who acknowledged that Neutra had been his mentor, teaching him how best to frame a building, inside and out, and situate it within its landscape and context. Less well known, however, is Willard Morgan (1900–1967), for whom Neutra was a mentor in much the same way and who preceded Shulman’s work by a decade. Morgan was the first person to photograph one of Neutra’s—and modern architecture’s—seminal buildings: the famous Lovell Health House in Los Angeles for Philip and Leah Lovell, built in 1927–29. This article uncovers the relationship between Morgan and Neutra and foregrounds the significance of Morgan’s achievement.