I’d like to tell you about the time that Julius Shulman made me pancakes. It was just about a year ago. Los Angeles’s most famous photographer, who at the time was 97 years old, had invited me over on a Monday morning for breakfast at his house. I pulled up the long driveway and knocked at the screen door. No answer. I opened it. “Julius? Are you here?” “In the kitchen,” came his voice, more gentle than usual. I walked in, down the entryway lined with his most iconic images of Los Angeles architecture, to find him standing at the stove, balancing on his walker with one hand and wielding a spatula with the other. He gestured for me to sit down at the lemon yellow Formica kitchen table, beneath a wall filled with a huge snapshot mosaic of his family and friends. He moved the pad of butter around the skillet to allow it to melt, then joined me in the banquette. “I want to ask you about something,” he said deliberately, taking a pause. “When did you become conscious of what you were doing?”
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