TANYA TRABOULSI
BEIRUT, RECURRING DREAM
BY ZAINAB MEHDI
Tanya Traboulsi, from the series Beirut, recurring dream (2021 - ongoing), Courtesy of the Artist
Tanya Traboulsi is a photographer with a unique story that combines her personal experiences with her artistic path. Born to a Lebanese father and an Austrian mother, Tanya spent her early years in Beirut. However, at the age of seven, her family had to leave for Austria due to the civil war (1975–1990) in Lebanon. For the next 13 years, Tanya lived there, constantly dreaming of returning to her homeland — a thought that consumed her until she was finally able to visit in 1995. “Coming back was all I ever thought about during those years,” she recalls. In 2003, she made the decision to move back to Lebanon for good.
Tanya’s strong connection to Lebanon was passed down from her father. He instilled in her a deep love for their homeland, a sentiment that has influenced her life and work. Throughout her time in Lebanon, Tanya witnessed several traumatic events. In 1983, she was not far from the bombing of the American embassy. Later, she experienced the 2005 car bombings and the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, which also occurred that year.
Tanya’s path to photography is as unconventional as her life story. She is self-taught, having first studied fashion in Vienna without a clear idea of what she wanted to do with her life. “I grew up in chaotic anxiety, not knowing what to expect,” she says, reflecting on her early years. At one point, she dreamed of becoming a journalist, but it wasn’t until later that she discovered photography as both a profession and an art form.
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In 2013, after her father’s death, Tanya experienced a personal transformation. This shift in her identity was when she felt she truly began to understand herself. She notes that while this change was positive for her growth, she also faced legal challenges following her father’s passing, which diverted her focus from her work for a while. Once that period of her life came to a close, Tanya returned to photography and published a book titled Lost Strange Things: On Not Finding Home.
During this period, Tanya also began exploring self-portraiture. In 2013, she won the Boghossian Foundation Prize for a series of self-portraits created shortly after her father’s passing. In 2014, she contributed to an exhibition at the Beirut Art Center, which featured portraits of unmarried women over the age of 30. The series, titled Something Borrowed, explores whether being single in Lebanon is still considered a social stigma today, as it was in the past
The political and economic upheavals in Lebanon, including the 2019 revolution and the crises that followed, marked another turning point in Tanya’s life. These events, combined with the 2020 Beirut port explosion, reignited her passion for photography. The explosion, in particular, prompted her to begin working on a project she calls Beirut, Recurring Dream, which she considers her life’s work.
Lately, Tanya’s career has been filled with new projects and group shows in Marrakesh and Dubai. A new book, A Sea Apart, published by Out of Place Books, was released in November 2024. In a group exhibition at the Museum of Anthropology in Marseille, France, she collaborated with writer Sabyl Ghoussoub. The exhibition featured two photographs of a large rock in Batroun, along Lebanon’s northern coast, taken by both artists years apart.
Currently, Tanya works with a medium-format film camera, which she believes has refined her visual language and style.
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