Elger Esser is one of the most prestigious photographic artists. His works can be found in the collections of top museums in New York, Paris or Amsterdam. Born 1967 in Stuttgart, Germany and raised in Rome, he is a graduate of the ‘Becher School’ of the Düsseldorf Kunstakademie. However one cannot immediately detect the formal strictness of the Becher’s in his work. Esser’s photographs seem to be more related to the earliest photography in their romantic static’s.

Esser’s oeuvre often deals with ocean expanses, coastal landscapes and seascapes, most specifically in his some of his earlier bodies of work such as ‘Vues’ 1996-2000 and ‘Wrecks’ 2006 -2009. A concern of historical landscape photography is one of his central themes.

Australia’s disparate coastline stretches more than 36,000 kilometres. It is a land that has been accessed by the sea, its lighthouse and shipwrecks represent the history of the land and it’s population creating a profound subject. It is remarkably apt for Esser’s eye and sensitivities to be applied thus to this landscape. It is stirring for these insidious locations to extrude the un-insistent suction and calmness unique to his work.