Elger Esser’s exhibit, "Et nous avons des nuits
plus belles que vos jours,” (translated as And we have some nights more beautiful
than your days) is
a subtle, yet intriguing collection of photographs and heliogravures.
Prints in color and grayscale showcase a variety of images
taken in Giverny, France, at the Fondation Claude Monet gardens, the site where
Monet undertook his famous water lily paintings. While Esser’s photographs
appear as escapades in capturing dusk and dawn lighting, in truth all were shot
at night. Playing with high contrasts and reflections, the images seem
otherworldly and mystical. As the title of the show suggests, the beauty
captured in these long exposure shots rivals the beauty of the gardens during
the daylight. Many of the grayscale images mimic the appearance of early
photography, while the ones in color work with ethereal colors of deep purples
and blues and golden auras. In terms of subject matter, the grayscale prints
adhere to traditional landscape shots; the color prints’ subject matter
experiment with reflections and reflecting surfaces.
Also on display are a number of large sepia tone prints
displaying grandiose architectural/landscape shots. Engulfing in their size,
these nostalgia-tinged images somehow continue to pervade fairy tale innocence,
despite their larger dimensions.
Overall the show is truly an ephemeral journey through beauty
and light. Traveling through the unearthly Giverny gardens, completely devoid
of life, and then through fanciful sepia-scapes elucidate worlds integrally
dependent on dramatic lighting and the interaction between the earthly and the
aquatic.
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