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Modern Architecture : Photographs by Ezra Stoller
Price: $221.98 Prices subject to change.
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 779.4092
EAN: 9780810938168
ISBN: 0810938162
Label: Harry N. Abrams
Manufacturer: Harry N. Abrams
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 228
Publication Date: June 01, 1999
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams
Studio: Harry N. Abrams
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Editorial Review:
The title of this handsome, oversize book may be a bit of a curveball: it is a book of photography, not a treatise on modern architecture. Ezra Stoller, like all the other great architectural photographers, is a meticulous, patient craftsman as well as an artist, so much so that readers tend to forget that his occupation is essentially a commercial venture. Most of the time, members of his profession take pictures because they are hired to, and only rarely do they shoot subjects on their own initiative. In the course of his 50-year career, Stoller documented the products of some of American architecture's best and most famous figures, including Frank Lloyd Wright, Eero Saarinen, Kevin Roche, I.M. Pei, Philip Johnson, Paul Rudolph, Richard Meier, and particularly the firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. His sensibility was perfectly attuned to the ethos of the best modernist design of the day--valuing rationality, clarity, controlled surfaces, and occasionally some drama.
Nowadays, architecture is almost always shot in color, but the most artful examples of this genre are in black and white. Most of the 400 images in this book are satisfyingly monochromatic, and many are exquisite demonstrations that art and commerce are not mutually exclusive. Harvard professor William Saunders supplies a learned introduction, and Stoller provides useful and revealing notes to individual architects and photos. --John Pastier
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - The man who captured Modernism.
The title of this marvellous book is a little misleading, it should be 'The Modern Architectural Photographs of Ezra Stoller'. The actual title 'Modern Architecture' implies that it might be a history of the subject. There are 164 large, beautifully printed, photos of what he considers his best work and 223 smaller photos, many of which have his (fascinating) comments about the architects and the buildings. The majority of the photos are in black and white (thirty-four in color) and somehow this ... Read More
Rating:  - Magnifique~
This handsome coffee table book describes modern architecture not by words but by photographs taken thru the lens of Ezra Stoller, who is fortunate enough to work with many superarchitects of the 20th century. Most of the buildings covered were taken in United States & many of them were in black & white format. The book started with an essay written by William Saunders, explaining to readers why Ezra's work is a cut above the rest of other photographers'. William commented that Ezra opted ... Read More
Rating: - Monuments not fossils
This is really an art book. The photographs are art. The buildings are art. They are simple, elegant, graceful, efficient, and drop-dead beautiful (I'm referring here to both the pictures and the architecture). They are monuments to the clear concentrated thought of man.
Rating: - Fabulous
Captures the clarity, the strength, the excitement and the in-your-face rebellion of classic modernism. Anyone who loves mid-century modern design, which is enjoying a huge revival, will love this book. Breathtaking. After some of the miserable architectural design work of the past couple of decades, this look at the past is a breath of FRESH air. It's very current. Very hip.
Rating:  - Beautiful fossil
Apparently photographer Stoller was commissioned by architects and developers to portray their interests in commercially flattering ways. So this "Modern Architecture" doesn't even pretend to weigh the successes and failures of modernism. It's a beautiful fossil, a nostalgic catalogue of the vanished certainties of the Mies-ozoic era.
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