Elger Esser is a Franco-German photographer whose internationally acclaimed work is held in major collections such as the Guggenheim in New York and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.  A student of Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Kunstakademie of Düsseldorf, he terminated his studies with them as soon as he discovered the landscape.  With his large format camera, he travels around the world photographing and capturing timeless landscapes, where neither the human figure nor its imprint are visible.  If his choice of subject matter is in contrast to his artistic education, he remains loyal to the teachings of Bernd Becher in his encyclopedic approach.  Beyond a description of reality, the image, built on art historical references, begins as a concept; the photograph itself appears only as a technological product, a tool used to connect visually with the emotional and the poetic.  Esser’s photographs, testimonies which bridge the historical and the remembered, are inspired by the writings of Proust, Flaubert, and Maupassant.  He draws on the nineteenth century not only for its literary and pictorial inspirations, but also as a source of techniques to be experimented with and reinvented (heliogravure, copperplate).