The photographic expression of architectural character: lessons from Ezra Stoller’s architectural photography

Abstract

How is it that photography, despite reservations due to its supposedly superficial nature, prevails as one of the widely used mediums for representation of buildings? This is not merely due to its efficacy to document nor its appeal as an artwork, but because photography, when successful, can convey profound aspects of architecture. With help from work on visual depiction and using a case study of Ezra Stoller, we offer a conceptual framework for understanding how this is achieved. We propose that some architectural photographs — particularly those that bear the paradox of being ostensibly objective despite deliberately fabricated in their making — succeed in sustaining attention toward both the subject matter and the pictorial medium. Moreover, they do so by sharing with the architecture the properties and content that the photograph is best-suited to exemplify or express — such as sharpness in delineation or the sense of being in uncanny stillness. Architectural photography of this kind ensures the claim that the building is a representational form in itself — something not just seen, but seen as.