Views on Château Lafite Rothschild - 2012
Elger Esser
Born in 1967 to a photographer mother and a writer father, Elger Esser spent his childhood in Rome. He then studied with Bernd Becher at the Kunstacademie in Düsseldorf.
His taste for the drawings of Poussin and Lorrain, plus his knowledge of Italian landscape artists, contributed to make him an artist who photographs as one paints.
“Discovering Elger Esser in an exhibition of photographers may give the impression that a nineteenth-century painter has intruded among them. But no, Elger Esser is indeed a photographer, even if his large, realistic landscapes plunge us into a world where Flaubert and Maupassant could tell us about the sweetness of nature.”
The delicate intoxication of his images has attracted many museums around the world. Initially, we felt the same. Yet it was another of his specialties that we chose for the Lafite 2012 greeting card. A mastery of deep black and white and shades of grey. A writing of light which is the very stake of the photography.
