Ezra Stoller, 89; Made Classic Photos of Buildings by Leading Architects

Ezra Stoller, a photographer who produced memorable images of buildings by leading 20th century architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright, Paul Rudolph, Mies van der Rohe and Louis Kahn, has died. He was 89.

Stoller died of complications from a stroke Friday at his home in Williamstown, Mass., said his daughter, Erica.

His meticulously conceived, large-format photographs became so popular with architects that Philip Johnson once noted that no modern building was complete until it had been “Stollerized,” or captured by Stoller’s camera.

“He was a pioneer in the field of architectural photography,” said Deborah Rothschild, a senior curator of modern and contemporary art at the Williams College Museum of Art in Williamstown, Mass.

“He really popularized modern architecture for a whole generation through his photographs that appeared frequently in magazines and books,” said Rothschild, who curated an extensive exhibition of his work, “Ezra Stoller, Fifty Photographs,” which is on display at the Williams College museum.

Writing in the New York Times, the paper’s former architecture critic, Paul Goldberger, noted that Stoller’s photographs “are surely among the most reproduced, and they have in and of themselves played a major role in shaping the public’s perceptions of what modern architecture is all about.”

Stoller was born in Chicago on May 16, 1915. He was attracted to auto mechanics as a youth until he became interested in mechanical drawing. He earned his bachelor’s degree in industrial design at New York University and studied photography there.

In the early 1940s, he worked for photographer Paul Strand in the Office of Emergency Management. Drafted into the Army soon after the outset of World War II, Stoller taught photography at the Army Signal Corps Photo Center in New York City.

Through the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s, Stoller established a reputation as a photographer who could interpret the most flattering aspects of modern architectural styles. His noted commissions included Wright’s Fallingwater house in Bear Run, Pa., Wright’s Guggenheim Museum in New York City, Van der Rohe’s Seagram Building in New York City, Eero Saarinen’s TWA Terminal at JFK International Airport in New York City and Rudolph’s Yale Art and Architecture Building in New Haven, Conn. Intrigued with Kahn’s Salk Institute in La Jolla, he shot it on his own.

Wright was so taken with his work that he tried to hire Stoller as his exclusive photographer. And when that didn’t work, Wright asked Stoller to teach his photographers his methodology for taking photographs.

Stoller’s preparations for photographing a building could be painstaking. He visited an architectural site several times before shooting, just to study how the light moved around it. He investigated the best angles for the photograph, often drawing little diagrams of the buildings before setting up his large-format view camera. He would fit himself into nooks and crannies to find the precise angle for a photograph.

The finished photographs, which were generally shot on black-and-white film, conveyed “drama and clarity, with sharp contrasts in light and dark,” Rothschild told The Times.

“It was a common occurrence for architects and students to be disappointed with the actual building after comparing them to Stoller’s photographs,” she said.

In discussing his work with Rothschild earlier this year, Stoller said: “I see my work in a way that is analogous to a musician given a score to play who must bring it to life and make the piece as good as it can be. While I cannot make a bad building good, I can draw out the strengths in a work that has strength.”

He added: “My work is the result of being trained in architecture school. Vitruvius’ ‘Twelve Books of Architecture’ with his three prime requirements for a structure -- function, construction and honesty/beauty -- forms the basis of my belief. A building interests me on an intellectual level when it fulfills these conditions. And I try to find the viewpoint in my photographs that will express those three conditions best.”

Stoller was awarded the American Institute of Architects’ gold medal in 1961, the first photographer to be so honored.

He later founded the photography agency, Esto Photographics, which now is owned by his daughter. The agency represents Stoller’s work as well as that of several other leading architectural photographers.

A monograph of his work, “Modern Architecture: Photographs of Ezra Stoller,” was published by Harry N. Abrams in 1990 and reissued in 1997.

Over the years, his work came to be considered high art and was included in the collections of many leading museums, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

In addition to his daughter, Stoller is survived by his wife, Helen; a brother, Claude, of Berkeley; sons Evan and Lincoln; five grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.