Ezra Stoller Archive (Esto)

Overview

ARTstor is collaborating with Esto Photographics Inc. to digitize up to 70,000 images from the Ezra Stoller archive to be added to the ARTstor Digital Library. Ezra Stoller (1915–2004) founded Esto Photographics Inc. (Esto) in 1966 as an architectural photo agency. Now directed by his daughter, Erica Stoller, Esto arranges new photography assignments for collaborating architectural photographers, including Peter Aaron, Jeff Goldberg, Anton Grassl, Peter Mauss, David Sundberg, Jeffrey Totaro, and Albert Vecerka. Esto also manages a comprehensive stock photography archive relating to architecture, interior design, antiques, folk art, and Americana. Two important collections from the stock archive, those of Ezra Stoller and Wayne Andrews, will be distributed through ARTstor for scholarly and academic uses. Esto will continue to support separately the research, editorial, and commercial uses of these images. While Esto's partnership with ARTstor will initially focus on the Stoller and Andrews archives, future collaborations may involve Esto's archive of current assignment photography, as well as additional content from the stock archive, which includes the work of approximately 60 different photographers.

Famous for his meticulous technique and uncanny ability to capture a building from just the right angle and in just the right light, many leading architects would commission him to “Stollerize” their buildings


Though he had no formal training in photography, Ezra Stoller is widely recognized as the leading American architectural photographer of the 20th century. While at the New York University School of Architecture, Stoller financed his architectural studies by taking photographs of other students' work. Later, he would bring an architect's eye to the challenge of capturing complex buildings on film, often using non-architectural elements to comment on the structures themselves. He photographed the buildings of renowned architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Alvar Aalto, Marcel Breuer, Mies van der Rohe, Gordon Bunshaft, Eero Saarinen, Louis I. Kahn, I.M. Pei, Philip Johnson, Le Corbusier, Paul Rudolph, and Richard Meier. Famous for his meticulous technique and uncanny ability to capture a building from just the right angle and in just the right light, many leading architects would commission him to “Stollerize” their buildings. In this way, his iconic images — typically shot with deep focus in crisp black–and–white — would come to define the Modern movement. In fact, many of the exemplars of Modern architecture are known primarily through Stoller's images. Thus, in addition to being an architectural photographer, Stoller also served as a critic, interpreting architecture through images rather than words, and leaving a long-lasting influence on architectural taste in the 20th century.


Go to the top of the page

Collection information

Total size of collection* 70,000
Percentage of completion 0%

* Image totals should be regarded as an approximation until a given collection is 100% complete. Users should also bear in mind that the number of images available to them may vary from country to country, reflecting ARTstor’s approach to addressing an international copyright landscape that itself varies from country to country.

Last updated: December 13, 2007