Sacramento River, USA

Elger Esser, 2007, C-Print & DiaSec Face, h: 72.4 x w: 95.3 in

Elger Esser’s C-prints on milky, semi-transparent supports, (currently part of a group show at Sonnabend), suggest old hand-tinted photographs on glass: mundane landscapes made magical through a filter of technology and memory. In Esser’s case, the technology is as old as the earliest photographs his imagery calls to mind (lengthy exposures), while the memory is of an unrecognizable present.

In the past decade, German-born Esser has been photographing landscapes all over Europe and this current show features a number of images he shot in the US. When you look closely at the details, you can recognize a pick-up truck or road sign that locates the work in a specific place and time – but the stronger feeling is one of placeless-ness. As with Chinese landscape painting, the work is most compelling where the image dissolves into misty atmosphere.

Esser is also working with scale, by making the prints so large you feel you could swim right into them. The subject looks like a picture postcard from 1890. But an actual postcard is a personal (if mass produced) memento, small enough to hold in one hand, small enough so that one can internalize the experience of having visited the place pictured on it. I’ve been there; I can call up my memory of my experience by looking at my souvenir. By enlarging the personal relic to wall-size, it changes the experience from an individual memory to something more like cultural nostalgia.

Esser’s photographs carry so much romantic yearning for a time and place we hold vaguely in our heads as 19th century Europe, yet they are contemporary. Because these images are of our own surroundings, their impact is more poignant. They evoke in viewers a longing for that which we already have.

Becher, Morris, Höfer, Huynh, Esser and Vaisman
February 2, 2008 – March 1, 2008
Sonnabend
Address 536 W 22nd St
New York (Chelsea)

~ by sheriwills on February 23, 2008.