Above and Behind

The Architectural Photography of Benny Chan
presented by  The Julius Shulman Institute at Woodbury University: Barbara Bestor (Director of the Julius Shulman Institute) and Ingalill Wahlroos-Ritter (Dean of Woodbury School of Architecture and Director of WUHO)
coordinated by Andrea Dietz

graphic design by Richard Massey
filmography by Alex MacInnis


event photography by Monica Nouwens

Woodbury University Hollywood Gallery
May 12, 2018 through June 24, 2018

The Julius Shulman Institute (JSI) at Woodbury University is pleased to announce Benny Chan as the 2018 recipient of the Julius Shulman Institute Excellence in Photography Award. Chan is a graduate of the Southern California Institute of Architecture and a Los Angeles local who works as both an art and commercial photographer.

Through architecture and photography, Benny Chan makes sense of the world; he is fascinated by how things go together. His photographs may collectively be read as an assembly manual for Los Angeles. They show the city from top-down perspective, as plan-views of its infrastructures and everyday monuments. They get inside the machines that run the metropolis, from the port of Los Angeles, to utility stations, transportation terminals, warehouses, and laundromats.

These images depict extremes, extreme heights, extreme scales, extreme access. And, they all have extreme stories. Chan’s efforts to make sense, to figure out, know no bounds. He hangs from helicopters to get the right angle. He builds his own cameras to surpass focal length limitations of off-the-shelf models. And, he finds his way behind the scenes and into highly restricted sites.

Chan’s most recent series, photographs of iconic and vernacular Los Angeles architecture under construction, is the focus of the JSI’s award exhibition opening at the WUHO Gallery on May 12. These documents peel back the familiar finish of the city and reveal its guts. They give Los Angeles the opportunity to see what it’s made of.

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With thanks to our supporters:

Associate Sponsor
Steelcase

Friends of JSI Sponsor
Neil M. Denari Architects, Inc.
Gensler
Harley Ellis Devereaux
JFAK Architects
Lehrer Architects
The Plaza – 1800+1840 Century Park East
Shimoda Design Group
ShubinDonaldson
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM)
Standard Architecture & Design

Contributor
Bestor Architecture
Johnson Fain