Elger Esser

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Elger Esser (born 11 May 1967)

Esser's work is held in many public collections such as the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art in New York.^[4] He has won the Rheinischer Kunstpreis^[2] and the Oskar Schlemmer Prize.^[5]

Life and work

Esser was born in Stuttgart, Germany and grew up in Rome.^[6]

In 1986, he moved to Düsseldorf, where he worked as a commercial photographer until 1991.

From 2006 to 2009 Esser was professor of photography at Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design.^[5]

He is influenced by Romantic paintings^[9] and 19th-century photography, and inspired by Gustave Flaubert, Marcel Proust and Guy de Maupassant.^[4] He seeks out beauty.^[4][9][10]

Esser's photographs of European rivers or river banks are large, quiet and deserted.^[11] Most of the time the horizon is low, as in the Dutch landscape paintings of the 17th century.^[12]

'Morgenland' is an old German term for the Middle East, meaning 'morning land'.^[9][10][13] For Morgenland (2017), he travelled to Lebanon, Israel and Egypt (including along the Nile to Luxor and Aswan) between 2004 and 2015.^[9][4][10] Using an 8×10 large format camera^[9][10] he made "luminous and unpeopled landscapes" with "glassy waters, still horizons[,] ancient ruins",^[10] shorelines, traditional feluccas and dahabeah sailing boats that "show off the area's mysticism, away from headlines about war and violence."^[4]

Publications

Books of work by Esser

• Posed Spaces. Edited by Kulturforum Alte Post Neuss. With a text by Kerstin Stremmel.
• Veduten und Landschaften. With a text by Rupert Pfab. Siegen: Kunstverein Siegen, 1998.
• Vedutas and Landscapes 1996–2000. Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2000.
  ISBN 978-3-88814-936-8
  . With a text by Rupert Pfab and a conversation between Esser and Georg Elben.
• Nach Italien = To Italy. Heidelberg, Germany:
  ISBN 978-3-933257-20-8
  .
• Marne + Loire. Bologna: Pendragon, 2001. Edited by Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Villa delle Rose, Bologna.
• Olivo Barbieri – Elger Esser: Cityscapes / Landscapes. Cinisello Balsamo, Milan: Silvana 2002. Edited by Palazzo delle Papesse Centro Arte Contemporanea, Siena.
• Cap d'Antifer—Étretat. Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2002.
  ISBN 978-3-8296-0047-7. With excerpts from correspondence between Gustave Flaubert and Guy de Maupassant
  (1877) and an essay by Peter Foos.
• Elger Esser & Bae, Bien-U. Seoul: Gana Art Center, 2006.
• Ansichten/Views/Vues: Bilder aus dem Archiv. Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2008.
  ISBN 978-3-8296-0357-7
  . With a text by Alexander Pühringer.
• Eigenzeit = Proper Time. Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2009. Edited by
  ISBN 978-3-8296-0418-5
  .
• Wrecks. Düsseldorf: self-published, 2009.
• Nocturnes à Giverny Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2012.
  ISBN 978-3-8296-0578-6
  .
• Zeitigen. Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2016. Edited by Pia Müller-Tamm/Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe.
• Combray. Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2016.
  ISBN 978-3-8296-0751-3
  .
• Morgenland. Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2017.
  ISBN 978-3-8296-0797-1
  .

• The Düsseldorf School of Photography. New York:
  ISBN 978-1-59711-136-2.^[14][15]

• 2010: Rheinischer Kunstpreis [de]. A €20,000 prize.^[2]
• 2016: Oskar Schlemmer Prize. A €25,000 prize.^[5]

Collections

Esser's work is held in the following public collections:

• Albright–Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York^[16]
• Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York: 1 print (as of December 2020)^[17]
• Centre Pompidou, Paris: 1 print (as of December 2020)^[18]
• The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York: 1 print (as of December 2020)^[19]
• Huis Marseille, Museum for Photography, Amsterdam: 1 print (as of December 2020)^[20]
• Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: 1 print (as of December 2020)^[21]
• Mumok, Vienna, Austria: 1 print (as of December 2020)^[22]
• Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria^[23]
• Museum of Modern Art, New York: 1 print (as of December 2020)^[24]
• Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn, Bonn, Germany^[25]
• Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam: 11 prints (as of December 2020)^[26]
• Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York: 1 print (as of December 2020)^[7]
• Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Amsterdam: 1 print (as of December 2020)^[1]

References

External links

• Official website
• Esser talking about his work for Paris Photo in 2018 (video)