Verdun sur le Dobus II, France

Elger Esser was born in 1967 in Stuttgart and spent his childhood in Rome. In the 1990s he studied in Bernd and Hilla Becher's famous class at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art. Today he still lives and works there. The classical genres of vedute and landscape are central themes in Esser's photographic œuvre. Largely monochrome colouring, a predilection for diffuse, uniform lighting and constant tension between micro- and macro-structures are characteristic of Esser's work. Sensitive and precise in his observation, Esser seeks in his surroundings those moments which reveal the essential character and mood of a landscape. It is no coincidence that Esser's photographs manifest frequent associations with late-18th- and 19th-century travel literature. His new series deals to an increased extent with the merging of photography into painting.