Ezra Stoller: Photographer of Modern Architecture
OLLI @Berkeley
Fall 2017
Ezra Stoller: Photographer of Modern Architecture.
Pierluigi Serraino
Syllabus
Ezra Stoller's photographs are now part of the history of modern architecture in the United States. Their instrumental value in spreading the good word may now yield to more durable value as art.
Arthur Drexler
Ezra Stoller (1915-2004) was an architectural photographer of immeasurable consequence in crafting the greatness of Modern Architecture in America. From his studio in New York, he covered all the giants of the Modern Movement producing countless arresting images contributing to the mythology and hegemony of American Modernism worldwide. While the centrality of Stoller in architectural photography is beyond dispute, the bulk of his output produced in more than five decades is unknown to the general public and the specialists alike. This proposed course aims to go as deep as possible into the archive to expand significantly the knowledge of the post-war period in the United States and beyond, its unsung heroes, and their groundbreaking projects, and the identity of this legendary imagemaker. It is conceived as a visual journey in the depth of possibly the most central archive of modern architectural memory, still to be mined to a very large extent, yet layered with oral history layer gathered from those who saw Stoller in action, his personality, and his ideas.
Lesson 1. WHY STOLLER MATTERS
Architecture as a cultural form relies on photography to cement the commitment of its producers and patrons to its actualization and its appreciation worldwide. The artistic authority of Stoller gives his archive enormous import on how generations later architecture is apprehended, understood, and reproduced. For the first time ever, an in-depth search for the unknown treasures of this extraordinary primary source is bringing an expanded legacy to reflect upon. This lessondiscusses critically the domino-effect that this material triggers retroactively on the shape and trajectory of architectural history, calling for its comprehensive reassessment. Stoller's imagery prove conclusively that pictures are the most powerful agents of memory and identity in the formation of culture in a nation and beyond.
Lesson 2. BEGINNINGS
Stoller was a photographer before he picked up the camera. In this section, the biographical and the anecdotal will inform the narrative dealing with the mindset Stoller developed before he entered the photographic arena to deliver the world superlative renditions of modernism at its ideological peak. The astonishing confidence in the photographic medium that the Finnish Pavilion by Alvar Aalto in the 1939 NY Expo is the manifestation of remarkable inner confidence, considering that Stoller was barely 24 when he took that image. Here, early experiences will be the focus of the writing, family and educational influences bringing to the fore the motivational structure of one of the most creative visionaries of the 20th century. Whenever possible and available, some autobiographical writing will be made available to learn directly from Stoller's words what drove him to the standard of excellence he never derailed from.
Lesson 3. STOLLER ON STOLLER: CLAUDE STOLLER GUEST SPEAKER
Claude Stoller, architect and emeritus UC Berkeley professor, will speak about his brother's rise to stardom in the world of architectural photography. He will share stories about seeing Ezra in action when he photographed his own architecture and in his meetings with legendary architects, such as Frank Lloyd Wright and their conversation. How long it would take to set up the camera, the way he would do site visits and decide which shots will be taken, what he thought about the work being photographed will be part of a lively Q&A delivery where the audience will be encouraged to ask questions to Claude and learn firsthand about his legendary brother.
Lesson 4. PHOTOGRAPHY IN ACTION: ARCHITECTURE MEMORIALIZED
The architectural photographer is the first individual that arrives at the scene. The walk-through is that magical moment of learning and rumination when the mind enters in reciprocity with the architecture. How did Ezra Stoller do it? Especially in this lesson the oral history of Claude Stoller will offer the unrecorded, and by default most authentic, backstage details of how this master photographer, who called himself Pictor, processed architectural space to generate his own sequence of meaningful events to be delivered to the viewer. Selection of the view point, waiting for the right cloud formation, setting up the equipment for that magical time of the day, assessing the site conditions to possibly rearrange moveable components, are all the inextricably linked elements that make or break a photograph. Stoller exerted fierce control on all these variable. A case study of one specific job from the moment he was hired to the time the building was published is here proposed as an invaluable piece of knowledge. The Ford Foundation in NY narrated through the experience of Kevin Roche working with Stoller could be one. Another possible candidate could be the St. Louis Airport by Minoru Yamasaki through Gyo Obata, founder of HOK, who helped Yamasaki bringing that project to realization.
Lesson 5. STOLLER'S SIGNATURE UNPACKED
The centerpiece of this lesson is the tracing and growth of Stoller's photographic signature over time. What were his trademark moves? a patterned viewpoint? a sequence? a way of portraying a detail? shadow play? intelligibility of the building vis-a-vis the wow factor? Additionally his interviews, theoretical writings, unpublished notes, lectures, media appearances will provide to backbone through which to construct a theory of architectural photography as Stoller either consciously or subconsciously throughout his lifetime to command the attention of the audience time and again for decades. In the rare published essays he authored, Stoller wrote with conviction about what architectural photography was going to do both for the architecture and for the viewer. Learning also how he reminisced later in life on earlier work will greatly enhance the understanding of his perspective of how architectural photography operates through time.
Lesson 6. STOLLER AND THE MEDIA
Being headquartered in New York, the media and cultural capital of the United States, Stoller forged potent alliances with the power brokers in the media, profession, and cultural scene. From Alfred J. Barr, to Henry Russell Hitchcock, to Philip Johnson, to Arthur Drexler, the various generations of NY MOMA curators leaned on Ezra Stoller's photography to package and deliver the canon for American society to measure itself upon. Equally consequential were his ties to the publishing milieu as his photographs were routinely used to illustrate the work of architects. Besides eyebrow journals and shelter magazines in the field, Stoller provided images to periodicals such as Life, Esquire, Look, Time, and Fortune just to name the most prominent. The correspondence between Stoller and the many individuals that engage his artistry in recording architecture will further provide a window of awareness in the thinking process and the politics of architecture and its pecking order. Last, but not least the architects themselves whose loyalty to Stoller reinforced their position of dominance in the profession through his photography.
9/21/17
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