La Curonne, Ardeche 1993
‘La Couronne, Ardèche’ (1994) is a black-and-white photograph of a woman holding a big round loaf of bread on her lap. It is part of the book, Voices of the Vivarais (2010), which tells the story of a collection of individuals living a very traditional lifestyle in a remote mountainous region. Of this series of pictures, Traeger has said that she was looking at a 19th-century culture, and capturing it with 19th-century tools.
In this portrait, the focus on the bread conveys a certain sense of pride and tradition. The title, which translates from French as ‘The Crown’ is used to describe this specific shape of loaf, but is also a symbol of royalty. The photographs’ slightly faded colours, which have come about as a result of polaroid negatives being developed in a sodium sulphide solution, give the piece a sense of nostalgia and melancholia.