The Descendants

Born out of his passion for history, Drew recreates portraits of some of the world’s most famous historical figures featuring their direct descendants. After in-depth research tracing the direct descendants and verifying their lineage, the famous portraits are recreated with painstaking attention to the smallest of details. From sourcing the period costumes and props to the authentic backgrounds. Drew then carefully analyses the lighting in each portrait and patiently recreates them using the latest lighting techniques. The end results often show startling resemblances to their forebears. The Project has been featured in The Smithsonian Magazine, National Geographic, The Times Saturday Magazine, The Washington Post, Business Insider, CNN, NBC and on the BBC World service and has been the subject of a Sky Arte documentary.

Awards

A departure from the rest of the descendants series where Drew has chosen to recreate portraits of lesser known figures from history, this time featuring portraits of Black American Civil war combatants, recreated with their descendants and captured using a 5x7 inch TinType plate camera. It was the culmination of three years work, researching archives and collections to find as many named photographs of Black Civil war combatants and then collaborating with the Black Heritage unit of WikiTree to establish their family tree’s and then trace and contact the descendants. As with the rest of the descendants series as many authentic and original props as possible were sourced and those that could not be located were made from scratch by a team of craftswomen and men.