Ezra Stoller Photographs Frank Lloyd Wright Architecture

About

Ezra Stoller Photographs Frank Lloyd Wright Architecture is presented in celebration of the 150th anniversary of Wright’s birth and highlights key photographs by Stoller of the architect’s important buildings. The commemorative exhibition will open on Thursday, June 29 with an opening reception from 6:00 – 8:00 PM, and will be on view through Friday, August 25.

Ezra Stoller’s concise and descriptive photographs defined perceptions of post-War Modern architecture. Architecture critic Paul Goldberger noted that Stoller’s work “.... has made him perhaps the most celebrated architectural photographer of the 20th Century; his pictures ... played a major role in shaping the public’s perception of what modern architecture is about.”

During his career as an architectural photographer from the late 1930s to the 1970s, Stoller worked closely with Frank Lloyd Wright, in addition to many other leading architects of the period, such as Paul Rudolph, Eero Saarinen, I.M. Pei, Marcel Breuer, Le Corbusier and Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Stoller’s connection to Wright began in 1945 with the photographs of Wright’s Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin and Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona, which were widely published and shown at the Museum of Modern Art in 1947.

Stoller subsequently photographed many other Wright buildings, including the Guggenheim Museum, Fallingwater, the Marin County Civic Center, and the SC Johnson Research Tower, examples of which will be among the 20 gelatin silver prints on view in the exhibition. Stoller spoke of the difficulty of capturing the Johnson Research Tower’s opaque quality while showing the interior form. He found the most telling view by photographing the structure back lit very early in the morning, just as the sun had come up. Stoller’s entire archive of Wright’s buildings similarly reflects the photographer’s keen Modernist sensibility and careful attention to vantage point, lighting conditions, line, color and texture. Stoller documented these cultural treasures the way Wright preferred them to be seen, experienced and remembered.