ELGER ESSER ‘Mont-Saint-Michel’ Book Release

April 20, 2024

Elger Esser’s photographs of Mont-Saint-Michel and its surrounding landscape – the mud planes of Normandy – will be exhibited on-site and published in a book by Schirmer/Mosel in celebration of the Benedictine abbey’s millennium this year. Mont-Saint-Michel is considered a pinnacle of medieval architecture and an icon of French culture, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979 and receiving over 3.5 million tourists annually. The artist’s latest project was commissioned by the French government to document the site for this significant milestone with the Centre des Monuments Nationaux as his client.

The book will be released to the public on 1st May 2023.

Elger Esser was born in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1967 and was raised in Rome. In 1986, he moved to Düsseldorf, where he worked as a commercial photographer until 1991. He then attended the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, studying with Bernd and Hilla Becher, until 1997. A trip to Lyon in 1996 marked a turning point in his practice, yielding an aesthetic based on the experience of travel in what Esser calls “archaic locales in the middle of nowhere” and postcards, which had fascinated the artist since childhood.

Image caption: Elger Esser, ‘Mont Saint Michel V’, 2022, dry ink on silvered copper, 32 x 42cm






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