Enlarge image Elger Esser - Voyage en Egypte (© www.elgeresser.com) Elger Esser’s photographs walk a line between painterly concerns and photographic documentation, unapologetically beautiful images that document an emotional presence in the synchronicity of light and color.
There is a sense of place to these landscapes, despite Esser's lending of location details to the titles. Whether they portray the Seine in Paris, a beach at Beaduc, France, a narrow strip of the Dutch shore, or most recently in Egypt his photographs pay tribute to the universal lure of a seemingly infinite horizon and ultimate calm in the foreground.

The picturesque quality of these views brings to mind everything from old-fashioned scenic-view postcards to nineteenth-century American Luminist paintings. But in the stillness of the landscapes and their muted, dreamlike colors linger evocations of the sublime, recalling the expressive effect of works by such great Romantic landscape painters.
The large scale of Esser's prints coupled with the expansive distances and often indistinct horizons he photographs works to envelop the viewer, offering an alluring tension between the landscape originally encountered by the artist and experienced by the viewer.

Elger Esser was born in Stuttgart in 1967 and was raised in Rome.
In 1986, he moved to Düsseldorf, where he worked as a commercial photographer until 1991. He then attended the Düsseldorf Kunstakademie, studying with Bernd and Hilla Becher, until 1997.
His work has been published in several monographs including Ansichten – Views – Vues (Schrimer/Mosel, 2008). Eigenzeit (Schirmer/Mosel Verlag, 2009)
Esser's pictures are included in numerous public and private collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Foundation, Kunsthaus Zürich, and FNAC Paris.