Mali Phonpadith, a young Laotian American woman and her business partner, a photographer, Dede Haas have just recently launched the new arts that combines of photography and short poems.
Mali Phonpadith, who holds a steady job as a Northwestern Mutual Financial Network Representative, but has a love for poems. She started to write poems at early age and has won many International Poet of the year award.
In a recent exhibition, Black & White
Gallery in Arlington, Virginia, Mali and Dede’s new line of art works were well received by visitors. Mali talked to VOA about her collaboration works of Dede’s international photography and her poems. She said… “I’ve been looking for someone to take my poems and give them another depth. I met Dede through a mutual friend and at the time she was looking for some thing, some one who can help bring her photography works to another level. December of 2007 the “Reflections Within “ was born.”
At the same token, Dede Haas was working in an Information Technology for a long time and also has a love for photography, but never take it seriously until her recently 50th birthday. She said goodbye to her IT work for good and started to travel again and take some more photograph.
Dede told VOA in a recent interview that she always wanted to do something more to her photography and take it further. “I went to Asia on my last trip and took many great photos and now the works are complete once Mali had put her thoughts in writing. I wanted to have my images to be more meaningful and have a more perspective of life of something is bigger than the world and that’s a reason why we named our business-“Reflections Within ”
Mali and Dede are very giving people,
in addition to making their business to sustain on its own, they want to start a foundation where a part of this profit and proceed will help many non profit organizations to help girls and young women around the globe to be able to go to school and be educated.
Listen to an interview in Lao from the audio files.
For further information please check it out at the http://www.reflectionswithin.com