Timing Of My Life Poem by gershon hepner

“The timing of my life was great, ”
Julius Shulman has declared.
There’s synchrony between the date
of his life, and LA which shared
its limelight in the photos he
took of the city as it grew,
from desert, downtown to the sea.
His images record a view
immortalized by him before
the world could realize that beauty
could be transformed into eyesore
if planners do not do their duty.
The city that’s the paradigm
for those who love to guzzle gas
he photographed before the time
that oil became the cause, alas,
not only of pollution and
the petro-dollar terror smog;
What now, too late, we understand
we treasure in his travelogue.

Inspired by a phrase spoken by Julius Shulman (born October 10,1910) , the legendary photographer of LA whose career received a jump start when he was commissioned by Richard Neutra to photograph one of his buildings, when interviewed at a Nextbook conference at UCLA: “The timing of my life was great.”

7/11/08