Pippa Samaya

With an insatiable curiosity for the complexities of the human experience, Pippa’s professional path turned instinctually toward the world of portraiture and international documentary/humanitarian work. She joined with USA based NGO One Voice over several years traveling to remote villages in India and Nicaragua as well as a Syrian Refugee camp in Greece. A specialisation in dance photography stemmed from the discovery that dancers provided a deeply empathetic physical vessel, which enabled her to communicate through external imagery the internal world of the human psyche. This lead on to extensive work in the contemporary dance industry in Australia, New Zealand and Europe working with award winning choreographers such as Anouk Van Dijk, Stephanie Lake, Narelle Benjimin, Douglas Wright and Prue Lang. Pippa’s poster image shot for Chunky Move’s work Anti- Gravity went on to be exhibited as a finalist in the Martin Kantor Portrait prize at the Ballarat International Foto Biennale in 2017. Pippa’s personal work in collaboration with dancers in outdoor landscapes across the world has further refined a unique visual language with a strong focus on design, emotive colour pallets and increasingly surrealist edgings. This work has lead to a two time win in the international 60 second dance film competition (Denmark/Finland), an Australian Dance Award for excellence in dance on film, winner of best film at the FAD film festival in North Carolina (US), selected as a winner in the international Life Framer awards (Faces of life), exhibited finalist at the National Photography prize, Nominee for the International Fine Arts photography award and winner of best action shot and excellence in staged photography in the SALON exhibit at the Centre for Contemporary photography in Melbourne. Notable to much of this work is her collaborative film company The Samaya Wives, formed with Australian contemporary dancer Tara Jade Samaya. Using dance on camera as a medium, coming together in life and in creation to explore the many colours and tones of what it means to be alive on this earth and reveal the innate one-ness that ultimately links us all. The Samaya Wives strive towards equality, wisdom, compassion and authentic connection. As well as their own personal work, she works with fashion designers across the world to create unique imagery, often in collaboration with dancers.