Susan Storm Professional Photographer

Internationally published photographer and writer,
winner of literary and photographic awards.

Whatever their lifestyle, their culture, their religious inclinations, their physiognomy or their history … everyone has a breathtaking beauty … way Beyond the Frame.

SUSAN STORM'S photojournalistic life began in India when she chanced upon the water burial into the Ganges of a holy man in Varanasi. The photo essay was published by GEO, and Susan then studied for a journalism and photography degree.

Her photographs and stories have appeared in magazines and newspapers globally, in Australia, India, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, London, Hong Kong, California, Taiwan, Thailand and others. She's won numerous photography and writing awards, is a member of the Australian Society of Travel Writers, was a keynote speaker at APSCON, sharing a podium with photographers Steve McCurry, R Ian Lloyd and Freeman Paterson, was a Writer in Residence, and has frequently conducted travel writing and photography workshops.

Susan has spent most of her life on a continental drift, moving to places as mood and necessity led her. Born in Prague, she then had an African childhood of song, dance, dissidents and an embryonic democracy. England, where she worked in breaking news television, introduced her to grey skies and media. A wild bus trip across Europe introduced her to photography, cultures, cuisines and an insane desire for constant travel. Then she emigrated to Australia, where she tried to fathom the shapes and forms of this ancient continent of heat, endless dusty horizons and red space and began to write and photograph. Years of travelling through Asia showed her calm in the chaos, various shades of green and gold, and a different way of believing.

Gregarious and sociable by nature, it's no surprise that being a creative voyeur is Susan's life's work. In her constant quest to see Beyond the Frame, to capture the "story" before and after the photographic process, there are few dark alleys she won't explore, or subculture she won't photograph.

Susan uses her cameras and written words as shield and talisman, communications tool and autobiography. Living through the lens, the process of each photographic exchange expands her in some way. Her natural cynicism has been subsumed under a belief that seizing the moment leads to encounters that alters one's life. She is pushed again and again beyond her own frame to live to the fullest extent of her ability - creative or otherwise.

Marrakech, the Serengeti, Chiang Mai, Shanghai, Saigon, Zanzibar, Paris, Naples, Beijing, Venice, Casablanca, Cape Town, Dubai, London, New York, Patagonia, Darjeeling, Kathmandu, Bariloche, Malawi are some of the pinpricks on her personal map. She's travelled on subways, metros, donkeys, camels, elephants, dugouts, yachts, rafts, horses, bicycles, bemos, rickshaws, limos, trains, trucks, shoulders and her well trodden feet. She's eaten buffalo bladder, honey ants, witchetty grubs, snake, honeyed locusts and Peking Duck. She's abseiled, kayaked, heli-hiked, trekked, cruised, sailed, walked over hot coals, been in a plane crash. She's photographed mating komodo dragons, cataract operations, holy festivals, prostitutes, tattoos, a pearl harvest and Mia Farrow's children.

She's slept in mirrored tents, palaces, a swimming pool, ocean liners,leaking schooners, the best hotels, the worst of flea infested cots, taxis, buses, and through important wake-up calls. She's dined with Mandela and danced, alas, with Mugabe. She's been propositioned by a Sheik, rejected a Baron, sung off-key with gypsies and danced in a forest with Turkish carpet makers.

Susan makes jewellery from the silver and gems collected on her travels. She hand makes greeting cards using her photographs. She loves to make the visually mundane, exotic. Her photographs invite another way of seeing, an opportunity for frozen moments to speak for themselves - beyond words, beyond the instant of image taking.

Susan lives and works in Perth and Sydney, Australia. She can be contacted for travel and photography assignments.

Susan Storm also creates beautiful jewellery which are on display in this site [+]