Inherited Lore
Paintings from a family photographic archive
Inherited Lore is an ongoing body of paintings developed from a photographic archive belonging to my grandfather, Ulrich von Köller. The photographs, taken between 1914 and the 1970s, document family members, animals, landscapes and everyday moments across a changing Europe.
I never met my grandfather. Through his photographs, I have inherited fragments of a world that I can only partially know — reconstructing relationships, places and stories through images, memory and imagination.
“It is as if a silent, greater family, stretching down the centuries, were peopling the house. There I live in my second personality and see life in the round, as something forever coming into being and passing on”
— Carl Jung
Inherited Lore is an ongoing project.
I continue to work through the photographic archive, allowing new images, paintings and fragments of family history to emerge over time.