Each photograph tells a story.

Having traveled back and forth to Vietnam for many years, Hoai Vu-Bender, along with Jenny Hanh (a Vietnamese-born photographer currently living in Italy), founded the Vietnamese Newborn Photographers (VNNP) community in 2018.

Currently working on her personal project "Far Yet Near, Strange Yet Dear" in Limburg and Hanoi , Hoai Vu-Bender is back in Vietnam to participate in art activities in preparation for Hanoi Creative Design Week, taking place from November 9-17, as well as to organize a talk show for the VNNP group on October 18 in Ho Chi Minh City, featuring Malgorzata Sulewska Czarnecka, a renowned Polish photographer specializing in artistic portraits of children.

- Ảnh 1. — Portraits of children taken by Hoai Vu-Bender at the Fine Art & Motherhood Workshop in Florence, Italy, in 2020.

Those who knew "little Hoai" before could hardly imagine the connection between a lively young translator and reporter, always chirping like a little bird, and the accomplished, seasoned photographer Hoai Vu-Bender, as evidenced by his later photographs which were both innovative and imbued with a strong classical artistic flair. How did Hoai transition from her primary job as a translator to professional art photography?

Actually, I got into photography quite by chance. When I first came to Germany, I had a camera and often took pictures of flowers, landscapes, or everyday life to tell my parents stories about my family in Vietnam and my life in Germany.

When my children were born, like other mothers, I became "addicted" to them, always wanting to take pictures of them. Many people jokingly say that I'm the "mamarazzi" type. If paparazzi chase after celebrities, then "mamarazzi" are mothers who always have a camera in hand, running after their children to take pictures.

One day, my child's daycare announced that a photographer would be coming to take pictures of the children. They only come once a year, so this was a chance for parents to have professional photos of their kids taken by a photographer. Initially, I was really looking forward to that day. But when I received the photos from the daycare, I was so disappointed because my child looked very tense. He was sitting there, his smile was distorted. I wondered, how could a professional photographer take pictures like that?

I tried researching all the photo studios in the area online to see how they took pictures. One thing that surprised me was that German photo studios are very traditional. They usually only have a few black, white, or gray backdrops. And the posing is very stiff. Meanwhile, in the US, or even in Vietnam, the photography industry is much more developed. When I was in Vietnam, I saw people taking wedding photos all over the country, from north to south, and doing a lot of outdoor photoshoots…

So, I decided to give it a try by asking some parents at the daycare center to let me photograph their children. My first photoshoot was in the fall of 2015. At that time, I photographed my neighbor's two children, a 5-year-old and a 6-month-old. I went for walks with them, talked to them, played with the children, and took pictures. After seeing the photos, my neighbor burst into tears, saying she had never seen such beautiful pictures of her own children. She was also the first to spread the word to other mothers: "Oh my God, mothers, you have to go to Hoai to have your children photographed! She can take pictures of children with such natural smiles; I almost cried!" That's how I started my photography career with photos of children and families like that.

I am also very happy to be working with my friend, photographer Jenny Hanh in Italy, to develop the newborn, maternity, and family photography community in Vietnam. We have organized many workshops for renowned photographers in the industry to come to Vietnam, and then organized seminars for photographers in this field throughout Vietnam. Hopefully, this time, when we award prizes for the upcoming VNNP newborn and family photography contest, we will witness an even stronger development of this photography community in Vietnam.

- Ảnh 4. — Hoai Vu-Bender's photos won first and second prizes in the AFNS Children's Portrait Contest 2019.

It sounds like an easy start, but anyone familiar with photography knows that it's not easy for a novice to reach the top, especially the top of very narrow paths. For Hoai, it started with photographing newborns and pregnant women. I remember around the early 2000s, the world was obsessed with Kelly Brown's newborn photos, but no one in Vietnam had done anything like that. For Hoai, perhaps besides innate talent, it must have been a very different learning process, especially living abroad?

It wasn't simple at all. At the time, I just thought, "Well, I'll just take photos outdoors. Nature is already so beautiful, why bother with a studio?" But the weather in Germany is very unpredictable; some days it rains, some days it's sunny, and other days it's very cold. I had to cancel many appointments because of the unstable weather.

At that time, the trend of newborn photography (photos of babies around 10-14 days old) was starting to emerge worldwide. My photographer friend in Italy and I jointly purchased an online course from the famous Australian photographer Kelly Brown. We enthusiastically learned and tried to practice with the babies of our acquaintances. I even went to clients' homes to take photos, because at that time I didn't have a studio.

But in big cities, parking is difficult, and I also have to drag and pull a lot of equipment to set up what's practically a mobile studio in their house. Each time I dismantle and reassemble, it takes an hour, not to mention travel time, and sometimes the baby cries... So every time I finish a newborn photoshoot, I feel incredibly stressed. There were times I broke down in tears and told my husband: I think I should give up, I can't continue like this anymore.

But luckily, my husband was always there to encourage me. He suggested using an empty room in the house as a studio. It was the largest room in the house, intended as a large bedroom for the two of us; he had personally plastered the walls, laid the floor, and built the toilet… But when he saw me crying every time I came home from a photoshoot, he said: "You need a studio to continue this photography path." At that moment, I thought to myself, I will try my best to develop the studio, so that one day I can proudly tell my husband: "I didn't give up. I did it."

After that, I spent a lot of time and money attending workshops by the world's most famous photographers in the fields of newborn photography, maternity photography, family photography, and fine art photography.

In 2016, I studied under the Dutch teacher Gemmy Woud-Binnenijk. At that time, her photographs were very famous worldwide. Actually, she was initially a jeweler, not a professional photographer or painter. But in just 16 months, from the time she picked up a camera until her first photos appeared in world-renowned magazines and became a sensation, Gemmy Woud-Binnenijk was voted the Netherlands' Rising Star that year.

That's why, when she held her workshop in 2016, I absolutely had to attend. I took seven trains from Germany to the Netherlands to attend. Sometimes, missing one train meant missing six others. My "career" of attending those classes was incredibly exhausting. But after the class, I felt completely overwhelmed. Her photography team was so professional, including a stylist, professional makeup artist, professional lighting technician… I felt awestruck, seeing how creatively they created those photos, but I felt I couldn't possibly do it, because those were huge projects for major magazines that could afford such investment.

Then I thought about how to simplify the process I had learned. For example, when photographing children, I styled them myself. I saw how complicated her lighting was, and then I visited Rembrandt's studio in the Netherlands. I realized that Rembrandt created amazing paintings using only light from a window, so why should I use complicated lighting? I applied Gemmy's simplification method to the entire process. In the end, it was actually very simple, yet it produced photos that gave viewers the feeling of looking at classical paintings.

Those who observe (and learn) from Hoai Vu-Bender's photography style may find it seemingly simple at first glance, perhaps because Hoai has researched and standardized a very complex process into something simpler. But in reality, when viewing Hoai's photos, one can see that the special thing is the emotion conveyed through light.

I believe a beautiful photograph can encompass many elements: lighting, color, clothing, posing... But there's one thing more important: emotion. I always emphasize how the photograph evokes emotion, how it brings that emotion back to the viewer. What do people feel when they look at the picture? For example, they might even sense the smiles of the children in the photo, or feel that the child's eyes are filled with worry or surprise... I want a photograph to always tell a story.