Azalia Suhaimi

Azalia Suhaimi is a Malaysian poet, photographer and creative writer. Famous for her ways in combining photography and poetry, she expresses her dreamy outlook in life on her weblog via what she calls "Photopoetry".

Background

Born May 18, 1985 in Kuala Lumpur, Azalia Binti Ahmad Suhaimi grew up and went to school in a small town known as Ipoh. She enjoyed writing ever since her younger schooling days and began majoring in English Literature at high school. She first experimented with the art of photography when she bought her first compact camera before flying off to Sydney, Australia for her tertiary education. Her love for photography grew when she went traveling around Australia during her university years. This lead to her signing up for a proper course on photography at the College of Fine Arts, the creative arts faculty of the University of New South Wales, Australia. Her love for both writing and photography was made public as she began to frequently create photopoetry works on her blog.

Awards and Publications

Azalia Suhaimi's first achievement in the field of English Literature was at the age of eighteen, when she got awarded with the Best English Literature Student (2002) award at Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Convent Ipoh. Meanwhile, her involvement in photography was first recognized internationally when one of her works was featured in The Daily Dozen section of the National Geographic website in April 2009. Her website known as Azalia Suhaimi Photopoetry was ranked as part of the 100 Best Poetry Blogs by the Accredited Online Colleges website. Some of her photopoetry works have been published in the Live and Inspire online magazine under the Creative Arts section every now and then. Outside the world of art, Azalia Suhaimi has also expressed her views on her country in the local Malaysian newspaper known as The Star .

Azalia is known to be currently working on a book which compiles all of her best photopoetry works.

Exhibitions

Azalia first began exhibiting her photography works during her university years at the University of New South Wales, particularly in her Colour Photography summer course at the College of Fine Arts and also during an international photography exhibition organized by the International Student Services of the University of New South Wales, Australia. She actively participated in a number of art exhibitions and events in Malaysia when she came back home for good in year 2008. Among some of her photography exhibitions included the Rantai Art Festival (2008), KLUE Urbanscapes (2009) and also the Kuala Lumpur Design Week (2009 and 2010). Her recent exhibition at the Kuala Lumpur Design Week 2010 showed both her photography and poetry works clipped around a tent she designed on her own. Throughout all her exhibitions, Azalia also sold collectible postcards she designed with her own quotes and photography.