Ezra Stoller (1915-2004) was the preeminent architectural photographer of the 20th century, documenting the modernist movement in the U.S. in definitive images of masterworks by Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe, Marcel Breuer, Louis Kahn, Eero Saarinen, Philip Johnson, and others. Ezra Stoller: A Photographic History of Modern American Architecture is a new book from Phaidon that presents the most comprehensive look to date of Stoller’s five-decade career. Written by Pierluigi Serraino, AIA, an architect, author and educator with extensive knowledge of architectural photography, the volume collects 450 images, many never before published, and spotlights Stoller’s importance in shaping how the world sees midcentury modernist architecture, even today.
Pentagram collaborated closely on the book with Serraino and Erica Stoller, the photographer’s daughter, who now directs Esto, the architectural photo agency he founded in 1966. Stoller’s work has been featured in other monographs, but this is one of the first to explore the breadth of his largely unseen archive of more than 50,000 images. The book is loosely organized into four chronological sections, each opening with a biographical narrative that segues into a portfolio of beautifully reproduced duotone black-and-white and color images.
