Suspended in time: ethereal photos that look like landscape paintings

The Guardian

03-04-2025

The landscape is an enduring subject of renowned French-German artist Elger Esser's work. His images often feature bodies of water, with rivers and lakes providing the focus for bucolic country scenes, or brooding seascapes, with vast skies and distant shores. With Sky and Sand, Esser invites viewers into a meditative world that reflects his deep connection to France, a country he describes as carrying 'history in its landscape like no other'. Elger Esser: Sky And Sand is at Flowers gallery, London, until 26 April
Esser's photographs are deeply rooted in the artistic legacy of the French landscape, drawing inspiration from masters such as Monet, Courbet and Chateaubriand. Yet his unique vision, evident in his attention to dramatic skies and the fusion of motif and mood, brings a poetic quality to his works, shaping what he describes as 'internal landscapes'
Elger Esser: 'I took my first night shot here in 1998 and returned in 2018 to take another shot from the same spot, in a different season and different light. Les Andelys is on the Seine. For young people, this is where their honeymoon took them, from the suburbs of Paris, if they didn't have much money, for a weekend, not longer, and it is this view over the Seine that many couples probably remember. So it's obviously just a beautiful river view, but it's also part of a collective memory of many generations'
'A very rare moment in which the Mont Saint Michel is surrounded by very high tide. The commune is a complete island and the mainland is flooded. You can see the crowds gathering on the right hand side of the image. In my two years of documenting the Mont Saint Michel, I was only able to witness this moment once,' says Esser
'This image was made shortly before Covid hit the world. I was hunting for sceneries closely related to the photography of Gustave Le Gray. Le Gray was a photographer in the 19th century who described himself as an artist, not just a photographer. Being able to create an image that is so similar in feeling, with the sun breaking through the clouds and the lone sailboat on the horizon, felt like a gift. Gustave Le Gray was also the first to use a form of Photoshopping in his images, using two different negatives, one of the sky and one of the sea, to create one image'
'This is Kerhervy, a little place in Brittany, France. I started to take images of this boat graveyard about 10-15 years ago'
'The Bridge of Beaugency situated on the river Loire. It was inspired by the children's story The Cat and the Devil by James Joyce. In the story a devil who offers to build a bridge gets outsmarted by a clever mayor,' Esser says
A key feature of Esser's practice is his innovative use of materials and techniques. For Sky and Sand, he incorporates silver-plated copper plates and Diasec face techniques, melding historical processes with contemporary advancements. 'Silver and copper have been photographic materials from the very beginning,' Esser says, referencing the early photographic experiments of Niépce
Esser's artistic vision extends beyond the physical medium to explore the fluidity of time and space. He describes his works as existing in a 'time tunnel' connecting the past, present and future
This temporal suspension is at the heart of Sky and Sand, where landscapes become metaphors for memory and history. Esser adds: 'They tell of lingering, traveling, staying and passing away, a state of suspension between heaven, sky and sand'
'My ambition has always been to make a timeless photograph – one that can age well, far from being datable'
Esser was born in Stuttgart, raised in Rome and now lives and works in Düsseldorf. Esser studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under the tutorship of Bernhard Becher