Elger Esser German, b. 1967

Known for their bucolic lyricism, Elger Esser’s pale, luminous landscape photographs recall the works of early Pictorialists and the sublimity of 19^th-century painters such as Casper David Friedrich. Characterized by their low horizons, vast skies, golden light, and archaic subject matter, Esser’s works are quietly romantic, evoking antique postcards, which have fascinated the artist since childhood.

Esser was born in 1967 in Stuttgart, Germany and grew up in Rome. Son of German writer Manfred Esser and French photographer Régine Esser, he spent his youth in Rome, moving to Düsseldorf in 1986, where he worked as a commercial photographer until 1991. Throughout the ‘90s, Esser studied under Bernd and Hilla Becher at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Distinguishing himself from his fellow members of the Düsseldorf school, such as Andreas Gursky and Thomas Struth, Esser’s work espouses a craftsman-based heritage rather than a conceptual deconstruction of the medium. With his central theme being historical landscape photography, Esser finds his motifs on his travels through France, Scotland, Italy, and the Netherlands, notably photographing the famed Mont Saint-Michel commune in Normandy.

Numerous institutions hold Esser’s work, including the Soloman R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Esser has published an extensive catalog primarily focused on specific geographic series and literary-inspired photographic journeys, including Morgenland (2016) which documents his travels along the Nile in Egypt, the Lebanon coast, and the Sea of Galilee, and Nocturnes à Giverny (2012), a specialized collection focused on the gardens of Claude Monet at night. The artist currently lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany.