Tessa Traeger (born 1938) is a British photographer. She is known for her still life and food photography,[1] and has worked as an advertising photographer. Her work has been published in two books of her own; included in a number of books with others on gardening and food;[2] exhibited in both solo and group exhibitions; and is held in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery and Victoria and Albert Museum, London.[3]
Traeger was born in Streatham, grew up in Sussex, and later relocated to London after completing college.[4] She studied photography at Guildford School of Art.[5]
Her initial work experience involved Queen magazine. At the age of 21, she received a £2,800 inheritance, which she used to purchase a Mini car for £500, a set of Nikon cameras, and the rent for her first studio, enabling her to start her freelance career.[4]
[6] She worked on the food pages for the British Vogue magazine for sixteen years,[7] in partnership with food writer Arabella Boxer.[8] Some of this work is collected in their 1991 book A Visual Feast,[8] which won the André Simon Book Award.[9]
In the 1990s, Traeger photographed the hill farmers and their traditional methods in a remote region of south-western France, resulting in her book Voices of the Vivarais (2010).[10]
Her 2013 exhibition, Chemistry of Light, was made by photographing decaying 19th century glass plate negatives that she had inherited.[1]
Her 2014 book, The Calligraphy of Dance, was made as part of an artist residency at Boughton House in Northamptonshire, England.[11]
She was married to fellow photographer Ronald Traeger until his death from Hodgkin's disease in 1968, aged 31.[12]
Traeger's work is held in the following permanent collections: