Family Trees: Tessa Traeger

Tessa Traeger’s newest exhibition Family Trees (Purdy Hicks Gallery, 2 March - 1 April) reimagines the history of Boughton House in Northamptonshire, combining old and new in her landscape and portrait photographs alike. Invited to photograph the ancient lime tree avenues in the park at Boughton, Traeger seamlessly blends paintings from the Duke of Buccleuch’s collection into her photographs of the landscape, thereby allowing his ancestors to move through the trees as ghostly reminders of Boughton’s past.

As in her 2014 series The Calligraphy of Dance, made while Artist in Residence at Boughton, Traeger decided to include the portraits of the family in her works. In this way, she connects past and present by presenting the trees in today’s landscape alongside the family who planted them 300 years earlier. She allows subject and tree to converse, often blending one into the other: a baby is transplanted to the top of a tree, while the ruff of a dress is replaced by a lacy collar made of photographs of reversed sycamore tree branches.

Family Trees reveals the history of Boughton’s ancestors, reanimating them so that they might walk again amongst the beautiful landscapes of their family home.