Deborah Samuel Biography

Deborah Samuel was born in Vancouver, Canada. Her family moved to Toronto, and by the age of fourteen, they moved to Ireland, where she studied art at the Limerick College of Art and Design. Deborah returned to Canada and studied photography at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario. 

She was quickly recognized for the distinct style of her fashion photographs and her intuitive and intense portraits of celebrities, writers, artists, dignitaries, sports heroes, and musicians — Leonard Cohen, Margaret Atwood, Rush, and Queen Noor.

Professional opportunities required time spent in New York, London, and Los Angeles, where Deborah became an in-demand editorial portrait photographer. She worked for magazines such as GQ, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Spin and Entertainment Weekly, LA Times, Saturday Night, Report on Business, Vista, and Macleans. She has also directed music videos of musicians and bands for major record companies: Atlantic Records, Capitol Records, BMG Music Group…

In 2000, Samuel turned away from the commercial world of photography to pursue her own personal work. This work evolved into formal portrait studies of animals and nature. In 2012, The Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto exhibited Elegy, a solo exhibition of subtle photographs of animal bones. In 2017, The Gardiner Museum exhibited her work, Artifact. Her work is exhibited in Canada, the United States, and internationally. It is included in the collections of the Royal Ontario Museum, Winnipeg Art Museum, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and numerous private and corporate collections. 

Deborah Samuel has lectured and led photography workshops throughout North America and published four books, Dog, Pup (a collection of canine portraits), The Extraordinary Beauty of Birds: Designs, Patterns, and Details, and Elementals, an ode to the enduring beauty of nature's phenomena.