Helen Savory is a Nambucca Heads based photographer who has recently moved back to Australia after living in Viet Nam since 1992. She is currently holding local photography workshops has a website full of galleries and in September this year will have a month-long exhibit at the Queensland Centre of Photography in Brisbane. Below is a brief bio of Helen Savory.
From 1992-2009 I lived in Viet Nam where I worked as a freelance photographer shooting for international corporations, advertising agencies, local manufacturers, businesses and media. I converted a pigsty into a darkroom, a garage into a studio, hung a gallery in a restaurant, sold my book and greeting cards nation-wide, taught photography courses and organised field trips into the boondocks. It was a truly amazing time to be in the country, witnessing the changing way of life since Doi Moi when Viet Nam implemented economic reforms by opening its doors to us in 1986. I cannot explain my deep connection and love for Viet Nam but it is one I share with my daughter, Hannah, and many friends – it seems to resonate with our souls and we feel we belong there.
I have travelled the country widely and wildly, mostly by motorbike – sometimes, once she turned eight, with Hannah riding pillion. My passion is shooting street photography – walking and riding along streets, tracks and paths and shooting subjects that take my fancy where ever it is and what ever it is. My aim to capture the essence of Viet Nam; faces of friends from the many tribes, their rich culture and varying religious beliefs, vignettes of their daily life and surroundings. Photographs have been published in a book, ‘loose dust blowing against a mountain’, a pictorial journal of my travels up until 2004 which sells for $30AUS plus postage. Volume II is on its way.
Moving to Australia in 2009 for Hannah’s education was challenging. We recently decided to give the big smoke of Brisbane a miss and have opted to live surrounded by the beauty of NSW’s Mid North Coast where we wake to the sound of waves and laughing kookaburras, walk to the beach for a swim or a fish and take long drives in the mountains we can see from our kitchen window. A far cry indeed from our little house on the outskirts of Sai Gon, its lush oasis of a garden, the friendly greetings walking to the morning market for a bowl of pho, the sound of the city encroaching on our wee hamlet (a downside to development).
You can also catch Helen on the 3rd Saturday of each month at the Bellingen Markets where she has a market stall selling Fine Art Photographs and Handmade Cards
