• STOLLER, Ezra | Seven photographs of the UN Secretariat Building
  • STOLLER, Ezra | Seven photographs of the UN Secretariat Building
  • STOLLER, Ezra | Seven photographs of the UN Secretariat Building

STOLLER, Ezra | Seven photographs of the UN Secretariat Building

$4,500.00

Many years after his passing, Ezra Stoller (1915–2004) remains one of the most celebrated architectural photographers of the twentieth century. The artist’s concise and descriptive photographs defined perceptions of postwar modern architecture, providing viewers with visual footholds to explore these new structures. Among the iconic structures he photographed are Fallingwater, the Guggenheim Museum, the Seagram Building, and the TWA Terminal. Often the images are as familiar as the buildings they document. Stoller’s work included photographs of science and technology, factories and industrial production plus commercial and residential architecture. His work can be seen as social history as well as a document of design and construction. Stoller worked closely with many of the period’s leading architects including Frank Lloyd Wright, Paul Rudolph, Marcel Breuer, I.M. Pei, Gordon Bunshaft, Eero Saarinen, Richard Meier and Mies van der Rohe, among others. 

When the UN was being built, Stoller’s studio was on 37th street between 1st and 2nd avenues—ideally situated to document what was at the time the most complex governmental complex on earth. In the autumn of 1950, Architectural Forum commissioned Stoller to take photographs of the Secretariat Building while it was under construction. The result was a 20-page spread, including a head-on view of the exterior, and angled view of the window-wall showing its fabric-like surface, views of the lobby, stairways, halls, and elevators, details of unusual light fixtures and air diffusers, and views of offices. The photographs present in this collection were not used in the spread and instead offered to Time, where they sat in the vault for many years. 

Stoller, Ezra. Seven photographs of the UN Secretariat Building. Circa November 1950.

8” x 10”; silver gelatin print; Pictor Pictorial Services stamp with reference number on verso. 

Held with: 

Banford, Jr., Bob. Typed memo signed to Mrs. Henry Ottman. January 17, 1951.

Oblong 8vo.; on Time magazine letterhead; verso only.

“The attached portfolio is one of the ones prepared by Stoller at the time our salesmen were trying to secure tie-in advertising with our November issue. I assume that he will either want it back or you will want to keep it for your picture files.”