Tessa Traeger

Tessa Traeger (born 1938) is a British photographer.

She is known for her still life and food photography, 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; exhibited in both solo and group exhibitions; and is held in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery and Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Traeger was born in Streatham, grew up in Sussex, and later relocated to London after completing college.

She studied photography at Guildford School of Art.

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.

She worked on the food pages for the British Vogue magazine for sixteen years, in partnership with food writer Arabella Boxer.

She was married to fellow photographer Ronald Traeger until his death from Hodgkin's disease in 1968, aged 31.

Traeger's work is held in the following permanent collections:

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).

Some of this work is collected in their 1991 book A Visual Feast, which won the André Simon Book Award.

Her 2013 exhibition, Chemistry of Light, was made by photographing decaying 19th century glass plate negatives that she had inherited.

Her 2014 book, The Calligraphy of Dance, was made as part of an artist residency at Boughton House in Northamptonshire, England.