Throughout his more-than-50-year career, Ezra Stoller captured American’s most important modernist structures, creating images nearly as iconic as the buildings they depict. In the new book Ezra Stoller: A Photographic History of Modern American Architecture ($125, Phaidon), architect and architecture writer Pierluigi Serraino dives into the photographer’s vast archive, showcasing 450 images, some well-known, others rarely published. By exploring Stoller’s work, Serraino is able to present a robust survey of American architecture from 1938 to 1989, from the celebrated structures of Frank Lloyd Wright, Eero Saarinen, Mies van der Rohe, and Marcel Breuer, as well as projects by lesser-known talents such as Carl Koch and Ulrich Franzen. Stoller founded Esto Photographics in 1965, which represents other top architectural photographers and now manages his archive. Esto offered full access to Serraino, which allowed him to showcase the evolution of Stoller’s work, as well as the evolution of the architects he collaborated with. Read on to discover some of the impactful images featured in the book.
A major moment in Stoller’s early career was being contracted by news agency Underwood & Underwood to photograph the pavilions of the 1939 New York World’s Fair, including Alvar Aalto’s Finnish Pavilion.
Stoller worked with architect Marcel Breuer frequently throughout his career, and photographed many of the architect’s residential projects, including the Breuer House in Lincoln, Massachusetts, in 1940.
The photographer captured Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s iconic Seagram Building in New York City in 1958, the year it was completed.
One of Stoller’s photographs of the main terminal at architect Minoru Yamasaki’s Lambert–St. Louis International Airport (1956) highlights the arched windows and vaulted ceilings.
Stoller shot Risley and Gould’s colorful Magnavox Research Laboratory in Torrance, California, in 1961.
The perfect angle accentuated the minimalist grandeur of the lobby of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s Union Carbide building in New York City, which was completed and photographed in 1960.
One of the first projects Stoller shot after graduating from New York University was the Music Shed at Tanglewood in Massachusetts, which was designed by Eliel and Eero Saarinen and Roger Swanson. He would go on to work with Eero Saarinen frequently, including photographing the architect’s TWA Terminal at New York’s Idlewild Airport, now John F. Kennedy International Airport , in 1960.
Stoller photographed Ulrich Franzen’s Brutalist Philip Morris Research Center Tower in Richmond, Virginia in 1972, the year after the building was completed.
Serraino notes that examining Stoller’s photographs of Philip Johnson’s work, including this shot of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Plaza in Dallas, Texas, from 1970, reveals the influence of Ludwig van der Rohe and Louis Kahn on the architect’s projects.
Architect I. M. Pei was another one of Stoller’s frequent clients. He photographed the architect’s East Building at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in 1978.
The book includes four chapters on the photographer’s life and work, as well as a 1990 interview with Stoller from View Camera: The Journal of Large-Format Photography .