PHOTOGRAPHS
Esser, Elger
Germany (1967 - )
Brantome II
1999
Chromogenic color print mounted to Plexiglas (Diasec)
17 5/8 x 22 3/4 in. (44.8 x 57.8 cm) image size; 18 1/8 x 22 3/4 x 1 1/2 in. (46 x 57.8 x 3.8 cm) frame size
Gift of Burt and Jane Berman
FA 2003.45

Since his youth Elger Esser has been fascinated with old postcards from all over the world. Like the postcards, the artist calls his landscapes “archaic locales in the middle of nowhere” that express quiet memories of travel to the viewer. This image taken in Brantome in southwestern France captures a sense of silence and blurs the subject into one sleepy landscape. The pale colors of Esser’s work enhance the feeling of solitude conveyed by his photographs.

Esser lives and works in Dusseldorf where he studied photography at the Düsseldorf Kunstakademie with Bernd and Hilla Becher. The Bechers are well-known photographers of industrial and domestic architecture. Their instructional focus on form and detail was influential in the development of Esser’s approach to landscape photography. Esser’s large-scale images of unidentifiable landscapes and deserted cities often take on the quality of abstraction. -- Label copy for 150 Works of Art, October 1, 2005 to February 26, 2006.

Elger Esser’s blurred images are produced by long exposure times and minute movement of the camera. The result produces images that are both timeless and running out of time. The golden sepia tone hints at a place lost in the past, unchanged by the present, while the blurred motion—almost animated in its repetition—hints at a place and time speeding towards its end. Esser’s focus is on “capturing and preserving subjective memories, time and tranquility,” and this light-drenched scene indeed seems dredged from some impossibly halcyon memory of the past. -- Label copy for Videowatercolors: Carel Balth Among His Contemporaries, October 15, 2011, to January 22, 2012.