Elger Esser: Ninfa

Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle is proud to present the fifth solo exhibition of German photographer Elger Esser. On view are works from his most recent series of landscape photographs, entitled Ninfa (“nymph”), which were created in the eponymous Italian Giardino di Ninfa, south of Rome.
As the area is particularly well protected at the foot of the Lepini Mountains and at the head of the river Ninfa, an ecosystem with a unique flora and fauna, the origins of which date from Ancient Rome, was able to develop there. Its urban structures were abandoned due to the plague and various crusades in the Middle Ages, and were reconquered by nature. In the 16th century, the aristocratic family of Caetani commissioned the construction of an English Garden around this fertile landscape of ruins. For centuries, the enchanted Giardino di Ninfa has attracted artists, literati and poets – among them Giorgio Vasari, Virginia Woolf, and Gabriele D’Annunzio.