Elger Esser

Elger Esser (born 11 May 1967) is a German landscape photographer, living in Düsseldorf.

"He is primarily associated with large-format images of European lowlands with his characteristic low horizon lines, pale luminous colours and vast skies".

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.

He has won the Rheinischer Kunstpreis and the Oskar Schlemmer Prize.

Esser was born in Stuttgart, Germany and grew up in Rome.

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

He attended the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf between 1991 and 1997, where he studied under Bernd Becher.

From 1996 he was a master class student there.

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

Most of the time the horizon is low, as in the Dutch landscape paintings of the 17th century.

'Morgenland' is an old German term for the Middle East, meaning 'morning land'.

For Morgenland (2017), he travelled to Lebanon, Israel and Egypt (including along the Nile to Luxor and Aswan) between 2004 and 2015.

Using an 8×10 large format camera he made "luminous and unpeopled landscapes" with "glassy waters, still horizons[,] ancient ruins", shorelines, traditional feluccas and dahabeah sailing boats that "show off the area's mysticism, away from headlines about war and violence."

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

He is influenced by Romantic paintings and 19th-century photography, and inspired by Gustave Flaubert, Marcel Proust and Guy de Maupassant.

He seeks out beauty.

Esser's photographs of European rivers or river banks are large, quiet and deserted.