West Palm Beach, FL – Elger Esser’s largest US museum exhibition to date is open at the Norton Museum of Art.  This exhibition, organized by the Norton Museum, is a selection of the German photographer’s large-scale images which reflect subtle sensibilities that could appear out-of-sync with much of today’s bold, big and brash aesthetic one sees at many contemporary art galleries or international art fairs.  Esser’s work gently defies the world of color photographs produced over the past decade.  His photographs of the sea, marshlands, rivers, or even city and town panoramas, appear as if from another era.  In fact, the association with nineteenth-century landscape painting is what often comes to mind when first seeing one of Esser’s large-scale artworks (some are over seven-feet in length). On exhibit until 17 June, 2007.

Using a large-format camera, Elger Esser makes images that complement the minimalist works of more recent contemporary artists, such as Sean Scully or Cy Tymobly.  This combination of the romantic and picturesque with hard-edge flatness and a truncated color palette are what make these totally contemporary views so captivating. In virtually all of Esser’s photographs, most of which are shot in France, Spain, Ireland and Italy, people and even traces of human intervention are muted or totally non-existent.  The colors in these photographs are shifted ever so subtly in the printing and also during the initial exposure. Light (or the lack of) and the limitations of conventional color film enables Esser to transform, as he has said, “a simple photograph into an arresting image.”  With civilization seemingly absent, the immense scale of Esser’s images brings the viewer directly into a scene of motionless isolation with every minute facet rendered with unbelievable detail.  Esser’s work stands apart for his unflinching attraction to beauty.  Beauty in the contemporary art world, it must be remembered, has often been synonymous with a pedestrian appreciation of what makes an artwork notable. Esser’s photographs are as remarkable for their beauty and simplicity as they are for their scale and timelessness.

Born in 1967 in Stuggart, Germany, and raised in Rome, Italy, Esser is one of the last students of Bernd and Hilla Becher from the famed Düsseldorf Art Academia.  Over the last decade, the importance of the Bechers to the history of photography has become ever more obvious to curators, critics and serious collectors.  The Bechers’ own photographic works will undoubtedly be regarded as some of the most significant artworks of the 20^th century.  What is equally remarkable are the accomplishments of the students that studied with Bernd and Hilla in the master class in Düsseldorf.  The list includes many of the foremost names of contemporary photography—Andreas Gurskey, Candida Höfer, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth and Elger Esser.  Esser is the youngest of these remarkable photographers and his work differs most dramatically from the rigid formalities—an austere aesthetic championed by his mentors and followed by many of his fellow students.

Elger Esser: Photographs is organized by the Norton Museum of Art.  This exhibition is made possible in part through the generosity of the Harriett Ames Charitable Trust and the Photography Committee of the Norton Museum of Art.  Media support provided by The Miami Herald/El Nuevo Herald.

The Norton Museum of Art is open Monday–Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday, 1 to 5 p.m. (Closed Mondays from May through October and on major holidays.) General admission is $8 for adults, $3 for visitors ages 13-21, and free for Members and children under 13. West Palm Beach residents receive free admission to the Museum Collection every Saturday, with proof of residency.  Palm Beach County residents receive free admission to the Museum Collection the first Saturday of each month, with proof of residency.  An additional charge may apply for special exhibitions.  For general information, please call (561) 832-5196 or visit www.norton.org.