Sam Bell’s interest in photography began in her early teens as she explored local landscapes with a point-and-shoot 35mm camera, later working her first job in a local portrait studio and film lab. She went on to found and operate a wedding photography company before taking on commissioned projects across Latin America, the United States, and Canada. She then spent several years working with NGOs in East and South Africa which deepened her awareness of photography’s representational tensions and its capacity to document while also flattening complex social and historical conditions into easily consumable images.

Her current work brings these experiences into long-term, research-led projects that examine the socio-political and ethical dimensions of photographic representation. She is particularly concerned with strategies for engaging with violence, aftermath, and historical erasure, which includes expanding the concept of violence beyond the immediate and visible to include environmental destruction and systemic forms of slow violence. Her practice-based PhD in Art History at SOAS University of London considers how documentary photography can make these ongoing conditions perceptible. She holds an MSc in African Studies from the University of Oxford and a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies (Postcolonialism) from the University of British Columbia.