TAMARA BAHRY: A PHOTOGRAPHIC LENS ON LIFE FOR TURNING THE ORDINARY INTO THE EXTRAORDINARY

By turning life’s mundane moments into creative and inspiring art collections, Bahry always includes a philanthropic component to her work by donating part of her sales to charities she’s most passionate about

- RICK MULLER

As redundant as our day-to-day lives may seem, every day is filled with wonder, with joy, with stories, with colours and expressions of living. It takes a keen and aware eye to notice them, but an even keener eye to appreciate them and capture them on camera.

Tamara Bahry has just such a keen eye as a Canadian contemporary photographer with a most distinctive talent of being a visual storyteller. Growing up in an Eastern European neighbourhood in Toronto and attending a Ukrainian school, she immersed herself in culture and was surrounded by creative minds, her mother, an author, and her father, a hobby photographer.

“Our home was filled with amazing black-and-white photos of different objects and nature,” recalls Bahry, whose fascination with the lens began by taking photos when she was just four years old. “I would stare at my father’s photos from our nature walks when I was growing up, and just study his composition, lights and shapes.”

The creativity of her youth shaped Bahry and never left her, even when she was enjoying a successful and demanding career in corporate finance. She yearned for a return to her creative roots and took up the camera full time, and she has been honing her craft since 1995. “For me, being a photographer is always an adventure, where I’m always bringing new stories, and it allows me creativity,” says Bahry.