Photographing History
Ezra Stoller
Figure 1 - Stoller house designed by Nemeny and Geller, Rye, New York, 1949. Helen Stoller with children Erica and Evan.
A photographer who captured the veracities of the post-war American dream was once asked a question by Modern Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable, “How much is real and how much is ‘edited’ reality’? At what point do the actual and ideological merge¹?” Stoller who is a true believer in the modern architecture brewing in the US was keen on portraying the truthfulness of architecture. His civic and commercial photographs aced the sphere of American modernism into having cover pictures of none but Stoller’s iconic photographs. His photographs were published in several trade magazines including House and Garden, House Beautiful and especially Time, Inc.’s and Architectural Forum where he found his niche. They were deliberate attempts to shape the then-ongoing movement of modernism from one end of the world, juxtaposing the copyright modernism flourishing in Europe and Corbusier’s canonical imagery. After decades of a long career, the question of the authenticity of truth in his photographs thus was important for him to reply to with an actual depiction of the American dream turned reality. Thus, he photographed his own house in Rye. The domesticity of the modern open kitchen and the idealization of a content family as the ultimatum of a dream fulfilled is depicted in a neat and intimate interior. Erica Stoller, his daughter who is now taking his legacy far and beyond, is caught in the act of eating. His wife, her hair, cut short as a symbol of a modern woman is seen cooking at the countertop, doing her ‘duties’ perfectly well. What else would be the realization of an actual American dream than this warm-cozy home?
Ezra Stoller is a self-taught photographer qualified in Industrial Design. Having attended architectural courses, he had a keen interest and understanding of buildings. His career flourished as a professional architecture photographer after the Second World War. Initially, in the 1930s he used 8x10” and 4x5” film on Deardorff and Linhof cameras. He later switched to 8x10” black and white negatives and positive transparency film. The 4x5” rear standard on Sinar Norma was a cheaper medium he sought. The use of large format cameras with a tripod enabled the precise straight style of Modernist photography. He did update his equipment to Nikon SLR systems with the advancement in technology. Carrying the equipment, the flash bulbs and hot lights, he was always on the move shooting projects back-to-back and producing 50,000 images by the end of his career.
According to Ezra Stoller, “The true architectural photograph is primarily an instrument of communication between the architect and his audience- an audience with the capacity and desire to understand and appreciate but lacking the opportunity to experience the work in question at first hand ² ”. The triangle of the architect, the photographer and the viewer concerned Stoller, and he thought that the architect is bound by several other ties. The reverent role of the architect in Stoller’s ideology is central to his photography. The building according to him is not just a physical entity, but an idea of the architect materialized in real time. Stoller humbly admitted that the camera does not often do justice to the intellectual creativity of the architect. For the same reason, the vision of the architect while shooting was crucial to Stoller’s approach to photography. The only architect who accompanied him during shoots was Richard Meier who enjoyed the process. The architects believed in Stoller’s eye as much as he relied on theirs. Stoller believed that he was only a means by which the architect’s vision was transcribed to the audience. As opposed to Stoller’s claim that his photographs are highly technical, his daughter and Nina Rappaport prove otherwise in their book ³ that he was inherently an artist. Although he distanced himself from all possible assumptions that his photographs are artistic, there was an artistic quality in the photographs of the details he captured, the documentation of the construction of buildings etc. The only kind of architectural photograph that existed for him was the one which conveyed the architect’s idea. This was in stark contrast to photographers like Julius Schulman who put himself ahead of the architect’s opinions. He considered himself as an architectural historian of sorts and wrote in his archives about how to convey the design message of the building and not about camera techniques. His photographs showed a space as it is. He held a strong opinion against fabricating a false visual to make success out of a mediocre project. Stoller was aware of the limitations of the medium of photography, the unpredictability of light, the inconvenience of the camera’s distortion, the strength and weakness of capturing a temporal moment! Yet he optimistically worked towards a versatility beyond limitations. He advocated modernism religiously, as a singular way to progress. Photography was his tool to reveal the functional, structural and material qualities of a building which was crucial to modern architecture.
In his essay on “Photography and the Language of Architecture”, Ezra Stoller reveals his frustration with publishers, indirectly leading the readers to another triangle of the architect, the photographer and the publisher. He vouched for ‘unfiltered and unadulterated’⁴ information where the order and dimensions of photographs are according to the prescription of the architect and photographer. Ezra conceived the visual as supreme. The literary communication of architecture was futile in his opinion. Magazine editors edit the photographs to fit them into alignments and more often than not choose photographs that portray the entire building in a frame. Having taken numerous photographs of structures covered in one single frame, Stoller contradicts himself saying that the building that can be captured in its entirety in one photograph is not worth bothering about ⁵. A few notable buildings among them are the Seagram Building (Mies van Der Rohe), Johnson Wax Tower (Frank Lloyd Wright) and Lever House (Skidmore,
Figure 2 - Seagram Building, Mies van der Rohe, New York, 1958
Owings and Merril). In fact, he puts a commendable effort in capturing buildings from end to end, climbing on riggings and self-inviting himself to strangers’ territories for the perfect shot. He was a perfectionist. The fact that he would take so much pain to execute a shoot that he didn’t believe in is evidence of his commitment to the development of captivating imagery for American Modernism. Despite his disappointment with the nuances of publishing, it is notable that the success of his career was through publication, not exhibitions. Stoller had personal connections with the editors of magazines which benefitted his career and also the architects he pitched. In the course of his career, the realm of architecture saw gradual changes starting from modernist to expressionist to brutalist aesthetic. Yet Stoller was a static force in the making of an identity for the buildings. However, as a modernist ally, he found little tolerance for the scenography of postmodernism.
Stoller’s process was consistent irrespective of the building type; elaborate and often involved chasing the sun to determine right angles. He says “Light is the only thing you have to work with ⁶”. He captured Frank Lloyd Wright’s Johnson Wax Tower (1950) and Manufacturers Bank Hanover (SOM 1954) at dusk. He explored the potential of night-time photography in flaunting the skin and structure of modern architecture, resulting in a sculptural volume and sense of being very different from the solid buildings hitherto. Stoller utilised daylight in the interior spaces as much as exteriors, highlighting forms and textures. Artificial light was also used, but only to enhance the impact of natural light. There was discipline and a systematic method in his work ethic. He relied on the mathematics of framing. His photography was based on calculations but never lacked the intuitive nature of an inborn photographer. He approached a site from its context to the building. The photographs of Kitt Peak Solar Observatory (SOM 1962) simultaneously show the magnificence of the landscape and the overpowering scale of the building. The reflection of the building on the ground after rain accentuates the perception of scale, which is a technique he has used elsewhere. For example, the Manufacturer’s building. As Corbusier believed that what is seen from a building is more important than how a building is seen, Stoller took photographs of the outside as seen from inside, merging the notions of inside and outside as a real modernist. (Fig15)
He would spend hours on site before shooting and generate a series of photographs which he arranged in a sequence of transformation through spaces. He planned on paper like an architect drawing plans. Having human figures in photographs, according to him shifted the attention from space to people. He captured space in its three-dimensional character and considered time as a fourth dimension. It is an interesting fact that he framed at times with a vertical line on the left end, whether it be a straight tree trunk or the edge of a building (Fig 13). The projects were documented from A to Z although half the images won’t make it to print. The angles of photography were unique in the sense that no architectural drawing would replicate the same. The depth of the photograph was emphasized by including elements in the foreground. He captured a couple in the foreground of the courtyard view of the Connecticut General and the viewer’s eye travels through the nook and corners of the photograph. For the high-rise curtain-walled corporate buildings that he was in demand for, he would frame a street-level photograph for the understanding of proportions and their relativity to the city. Stoller’s career and the construction of government-sponsored buildings in the country saw exponential growth at the same time. The United Nations Complex in Manhattan would be a classic example of his photography. The Albany Mall Government Complex in New York stands out in the context of similar-scale buildings. The hierarchy is established by the effective use of background. Other than the state-of-the-art buildings he photographed, we can find his portfolio spread across photographs of factories, architectural models, showrooms, shops, and even portraits. The industrial photographs spoke of the modern times in a modern language using the camera, which is a progeny of the machine age. His photographs of the factory workers represented them as the protagonists in an era when the lower class of society were belittled. On the contrary, they also increased the appeal of American manufacturing encouraging more investments. Through stop-motion photography, he created artistic images of the assembly line, the symbol of the Modernist Manifesto (Fig 11). The industrial buildings were also shot for their architecture commissioned by SOM and Louis I. Kahn. He would still photograph architecture and machines with the workers, showing their interdependence and providing evidence for empathy in his approach.
Figure 9- Fallingwater, Bear Run, Pennsylvania, Frank Lloyd Wright, 1963
If Julius Schulman in the West Coast is identified more with luxurious residential photographs, Stoller’s East Coast residential photography commissioned by his architect friends were ‘attainable, not aspirational ⁷ ’. His residential photography is celebrated less in comparison to the commercial. They were mostly located in rural settings and amidst an undisturbed landscape of modernist aesthetics. Thus, the relationship between the house and the landscape had to be communicated, and so were the house’s sculptural qualities that Ezra couldn’t compromise on. After the Depression and World War, domestic architecture took a leap in America as in the rest of the world. A house in the nation was finally affordable. Modernism meant hope to laymen as it was an opportunity for architects to deliver cheaper living space in bulk. The world changed in this direction with the welcoming of new material resources like steel, glass and plastics. The exposed was no longer unpleasant nor was the minimal a sign of poverty. The modern was an aspiration that Stoller photographed with diligence to portray the house as a machine, a machine to ease the lives of its dwellers. He saw the machines of the modern American house the same way he saw the industrial machines, both with an underlying relationship to human. The human is mostly a woman in photographs of the kitchen, the ideal 20th-century domesticated woman.
Of all the architects Stoller has worked with, he considered Frank Lloyd Wright as the only genius he has met. The photographs of Wright’s architecture have enhanced his portfolio in his early career. As Wright was supposedly the only modernist architect of the time who heeded the surroundings in design, Stoller’s use of colour film was mostly used for recording Wright’s buildings and context. Fallingwater, first visited in 1963 was later photographed by Stoller on assignment for the Museum of Modern Art, New York. More than a commissioned project, it was his tribute to Wright’s mastery. He shot from unusual viewpoints in comparison to Bill Hedrick’s initial photographs and used subtle artificial light.
Figure 10- Quincy Shaw McKean House, Prides Hill, Massachusetts, Quincy Shaw McKean, 1941
The architects of the mid-twentieth century designed buildings in a neutral tone for which Stoller’s striking black and white photography was apt. Stoller thought of colour photography as an inaccurate tool used only for creating an impression in the viewer. According to him, the colour caused a distraction. Later in the twentieth century, colour photography grew as a medium to be more inexpensive than it used to be, and architects began using colour in design as an integral element. This notion posed a question; Were the architects designing architecture to be photographed? Stoller’s career coincided with the growing ocular-centric attitude of the industry which favoured him. Images overtook the copy-to-image ratio in magazines. Photographing architecture was not just a documentation for the architects, but a marketing technique as well as a means to be etched in history. Architecture was soon meant to be photographed rather than experienced because photographs travel the world, multiplying recognition. “Do we not sometimes design for the pages of the Architecture Forum; do we not design too deliberately for an Ezra Stoller colour shot? Is it not merely fashion we aim for?” ⁸ Johnson’s critique of the architecture fraternity is valid to date.
Little did I know in the first year of architectural school that the images of the Salk Institute, the Seagram and great American Architecture that were hand sketched and imprinted in my early architectural consciousness were indeed photographs of a legend! Ezra Stoller’s contribution to the archive of architectural knowledge was invaluable. Through his perception of modern architecture, he has shaped our perception of modern architecture. Philip Johnson once commented on how architects wanted their projects to be ‘Stollerised’ because Stoller has been an indispensable factor in promoting the architects’ names along with the buildings. When he retired and found he lacked the energy for the tedious tasks, he invited young photographers to continue his lineage through his brainchild Esto Photographics. For him, shortcuts were not an option. “Even if I had to photograph a salad, I would get involved somehow ⁹ ” said he, in an interview. His scrupulous photographs revealed the most crucial elements of modern architecture, be it materials, the skeleton of buildings or the formality of forms. Storytelling was his forte. It was a journey from space to space. He knew very well that his oeuvre was going to be inscribed in the history of Modern Architecture in the United States. Along with this consciousness and the camaraderie he shared with the architects he collaborated with, he perceived spaces through the architect’s eye and portrayed the strength of each building on photographs. In a way, he practised architecture through photography
1 Mimi Zeiger, ‘Ezra Stoller Modern Times’, Aperture, no. 238 (2020): 112–19.
2 Ezra Stoller, ‘Photography and the Language of Architecture’, Perspecta 8 (1963): 43–44, https://doi.org/10.2307/1566900.
3 Nina Rappaport, Erica Stoller, and Ezra Stoller, Ezra Stoller, Photographer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012).
4 Stoller, ‘Photography and the Language of Architecture’. 5 Stoller.
6 ‘Ezra SToller: A Lifetime of Architectural Photography, Interview by Steve Simmons’, in Ezra Stoller: A Photographic History of Modern American Architecture, by Pierluigi Serraino (London : New York: Phaidon Press Limited ; Phaidon Press, 2019), 408–11.
7 Stoller, ‘Photography and the Language of Architecture’.
8 Pierluigi Serraino, Ezra Stoller: A Photographic History of Modern American Architecture (London : New York: Phaidon Press Limited ; Phaidon Press, 2019).
9 ‘Ezra SToller: A Lifetime of Architectural Photography, Interview by Steve Simmons’.
Bibliography
‘Ezra Stoller: A Lifetime of Architectural Photography, Interview by Steve Simmons’. In Ezra Stoller: A Photographic History of Modern American Architecture, 408–11. London : New York: Phaidon Press Limited ; Phaidon Press, 2019.
Rappaport, Nina, Erica Stoller, and Ezra Stoller. Ezra Stoller, Photographer. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012.
Serraino, Pierluigi. Ezra Stoller: A Photographic History of Modern American Architecture. London : New York: Phaidon Press Limited ; Phaidon Press, 2019.
Stoller, Ezra. ‘Photography and the Language of Architecture’. Perspecta 8 (1963): 43–44. https://doi.org/10.2307/1566900.
Zeiger, Mimi. ‘Ezra Stoller Modern Times’. Aperture, no. 238 (2020): 112–19.
List of Illustrations
Fig 1 : Stoller, Ezra. Stoller House. 1949. Photograph. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26900350.
Fig 2 :Stoller, Ezra. Seagram Building, Park Avenue, Mies van Der Rohe with Philip Johnson. 1952. Photograph. https://www.ezrastoller.com/ezra-stoller-3.
Fig 3 : Stoller, Ezra. Kitt Peak Solar Observatory, Pima County, Arizona, Skidmore Owings and Merril. 1962. Photograph. https://www.archdaily.com/121364/ad-classics-mcmath-pierce-solar-telescope-kitt-peak-national-observatory-som/503806df28ba0d599b0009d3-ad-classics-mcmath-pierce-solar-telescope-kitt-peak-national-observatory-som-photo.
Fig 4 : Stoller, Ezra. Kitt Peak Solar Observatory, Pima County, Arizona, Skidmore Owings and Merril. Accessed 15 January 2023. https://www.archdaily.com/121364/ ad-classics-mcmath-pierce-solar-telescope-kitt-peak-national-observatory-som/503806df28ba0d599b0009d3-ad-classics-mcmath-pierce-solar-telescope-kitt-peak-national-observatory-som-photo.
Fig 5 : Stoller, Ezra. John Wax Research Tower- Frank Lloyd Wright. 1950. Photograph. https://www.archdaily.com/544911/ad-classics-sc-johnson-wax-researchtower-frank-lloyd-wright/53691433c07a806b9b0000cf-ad-classics-sc-johnson-wax-research-tower-frank-lloyd-wright-photo.
Fig 6 : Stoller, Ezra. Manufacturer’s Trust Company, Fifth Avenue, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, New York, NY (1954). 1954. Photograph. https://www.artsy.net/ artwork/ezra-stoller-manufacturers-trust-company-fifth-avenue-skidmore-owings-and-merrill-new-york-ny.
Fig 7 : Stoller, Ezra. Connecticut General Life Insurance Co., Skidmore Owings and Merrill. 1957. Photograph. https://cdnassets.hw.net/dims4/GG/ 7379ca1/2147483647/resize/876x%3E/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdnassets.hw.net%2Fe3%2F29%2F1a4c311d4552b0bce0129156c0bc%2Fconnecticut-general-life-insurance-som-interior4.jpg.
Fig 8 : Stoller, Ezra. Albany Mall Government Complex, New York. 1975. Photograph. https://www.ezrastoller.com/ezra-stoller-us-industry.
Fig 9 : Stoller, Ezra. Fallingwater, Bear Run, Pennsylvania, Frank Lloyd Wright, 1963. 1963. Photograph.
Fig 10 : Stoller, Ezra. Quincy Shaw McKean House, Prides Hill, Massachusetts, Quincy Shaw McKean, 1941. 1941. Photograph.
Fig 11 : Stoller, Ezra. Upjohn, Kalamazoo, Michigan, 1953. 1953. Photograph.
Fig 12 : Stoller, Ezra. Salk Institute, San Diego, California, Louis Kahn, 1960. 1960. Photograph.
Fig 13 : Stoller, Ezra. Guest Cottage, Elevation, “Cocoon House”, Sarasota, Florida. Ralph Twitchell and Paul Rudolph, 1951. 1951. Photograph.
Fig 14 : Stoller, Ezra. Guest Cottage, Interior, “Cocoon House”, Sarasota, Florida. Ralph Twitchell and Paul Rudolph, 1951. 1951. Photograph.
Fig 15 : Stoller, Ezra. Weyerhaeuser, Tacoma, Washington, Skidmore Owings and Merrill, 1971. 1971. Photograph.