Courtesy of the Estate of Marvin Rand
After 60 years, we’re used to midcentury modern architecture. Fetishized by some and dismissed by others, its spare lines, glass walls, and delicate asymmetry no longer surprises. As a result, the forthcoming book California Captured (Phaidon, $59.95), a monograph of the architectural photographer Marvin Rand that will ship later this month, comes as something of a shock: Rand’s images evoke a time where midcentury architecture was so new, it wasn’t celebrated. Rather, it was something to fight for.
“The history of Los Angeles architecture in the 20th century is highly tied to particularly iconic photographs,” says Pierluigi Serraino, an architect and author who contributed to the book. “Marvin Rand was very much involved in the development of that iconography.”