Giverny is a small French village in Upper Normandy well known as the home of the French Impressionist Claude Monet (1840–1926). He bought a house there in 1883 and tended to its garden, whose ponds and water lilies became the subjects of his most famous paintings. By immortalizing that garden, Monet inspired generations of artists to come work there.
Elger Esser is one of them. In 2010 he shot two series entitled Giverny and Combray, the latter taking its name from the imaginary name given to the city of Illiers (today Illiers-Combray) where the narrator of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time spends his childhood. In 2012, Schirmer/Mosel published Elger’s never-before-seen garden pictures, taken at dusk and at nighttime, lit only by the setting sun and the moon.
This work presents 13 photographs, mostly in black-and-white. A few of these black-and-white photographs use gravure reproduction techniques dating from the 19th century. Little used today, they allow for very fine shades of gray and a remarkable sense of depth. The pictures of plant life are highly detailed, the result of a long exposure necessary when shooting in low light.
Two photographs from the series, Giverny VII and Giverny VIII (the cover photo) are in color. They offer a touch of liveliness among the grays. They are photographs that take us back to the colorful world of the Impressionists, albeit with hints of near fluorescent color found in more contemporary photography. In the silence of the night, we watch for something to emerge from the rich shadows.
Elger Esser is a German photographer. He was born in 1967 in Stuttgart and studied under Bernd Becher at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 1991 to 1997. Here he plays with the vintage technique of gravure printing, frequently making direct and indirect references to the past in the composition of his images.
Elger Esser, « Nocturnes à Giverny »,
Text by Hubertus von Amelunxen (Allemand / Anglais / Français)
48 pages, 13 pictures.
ISBN 978-3-8296-0578-6.
Price : € 39.80, € (A) 41.- CHF 56.90
