Ezra Stoller was born in Chicago in 1915, grew up in New York and studied architecture at NYU. As a student, he began photographing buildings, models and sculpture; in 1938, he graduated with a BFA in Industrial Design. In 1940-1941, Stoller worked with the photographer Paul Strand in the Office of Emergency Management; he was drafted in 1942 and was a photographer at the Army Signal Corps Photo Center. After World War II, Stoller continued his career as an architectural photographer and also focused on industrial and scientific commissions. Over the next forty years, he became best known for images of buildings.
He worked from the late 1930s into the 1980s. Stoller’s images convey the three-dimensional experience of architecture through a two-dimensional medium with careful attention to vantage point and lighting conditions as well as line, color, form and texture. Among the iconic structures he photographed are Fallingwater, the Guggenheim Museum, the Seagram Building, and the TWA Terminal. Often the images are as familiar as the buildings they document. Ezra Stoller’s work included photographs of science and technology, factories and industrial production plus commercial and residential architecture. His work can be seen as social history as well as documents of design and construction.
Many modern buildings are recognized and remembered by the images Stoller created as he was uniquely able to visualize the formal and spatial aspirations of Modern architecture. During his long career as an architectural photographer, Stoller worked closely with many of the period’s leading architects including Frank Lloyd Wright, Paul Rudolph, Marcel Breuer, I.M. Pei, Gordon Bunshaft, Eero Saarinen, Richard Meier and Mies van der Rohe, among others. Stoller died in Williamstown, Massachusetts, in 2004.
© Ezra Stoller/Esto, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York
He worked from the late 1930s into the 1980s. Stoller’s images convey the three-dimensional experience of architecture through a two-dimensional medium with careful attention to vantage point and lighting conditions as well as line, color, form and texture. Among the iconic structures he photographed are Fallingwater, the Guggenheim Museum, the Seagram Building, and the TWA Terminal. Often the images are as familiar as the buildings they document. Ezra Stoller’s work included photographs of science and technology, factories and industrial production plus commercial and residential architecture. His work can be seen as social history as well as documents of design and construction.
Many modern buildings are recognized and remembered by the images Stoller created as he was uniquely able to visualize the formal and spatial aspirations of Modern architecture. During his long career as an architectural photographer, Stoller worked closely with many of the period’s leading architects including Frank Lloyd Wright, Paul Rudolph, Marcel Breuer, I.M. Pei, Gordon Bunshaft, Eero Saarinen, Richard Meier and Mies van der Rohe, among others. Stoller died in Williamstown, Massachusetts, in 2004.
© Ezra Stoller/Esto, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York