Collection: Stephen Sammons

Stephen Sammons, a seasoned traveler from the age of nine, spent his youth migrating back and forth across continent and ocean as his family made multiple moves between England to Canada. He began a photo-journalism career in Montreal after studying at McGill University. In the summer of 1969, work for a small film magazine led to an invitation to shoot photographs of an interview with Yoko Ono, while she and John Lennon were staging a “bed-in for peace”. Around midday, in the midst of a small crowd of visitors including Timothy Leary and Tommy Smothers, Lennon was inspired to write and record the anthemic song “Give Peace A Chance”.

Spending most of the afternoon and evening in the suite with Lennon and a variety of guests, Sammons was fortunate to participate in that piece of musical history, both photographing it and joining in the chorus. This event led to frequent assignments for a major Canadian magazine, both as a photographer and writer. Moving back to England, he covered stories for them in many parts of Europe, ranging from the first balloon crossing of the Irish Sea to running the bulls in Spain. With a taste for travel firmly established in his life, he slipped gradually from journalism into a career in the travel industry, operating tour groups ranging in size from a handful to a thousand.

Once again back in America, he spent many years designing unique travel programs for major international corporations, motivating their customers and employees in exotic destinations from the Arctic Circle to the Great Barrier Reef. Later in life, a family design business took him around the world in search for new products from the markets of northern Thailand to the workshops of northern Bohemia. Traveling in every conceivable manner, from sampans to super yachts, rickshaws to bullet trains, hot air balloons to supersonic jets, he has toured and worked in more than sixty countries on six continents.

Now, after raising a family in Connecticut, and shedding business responsibilities, he and his wife spend the summers exploring the waterways of Europe on their modest motoryacht, recording the landscapes, towns and cities from a maritime and riverine perspective. Winters are passed on a small island in the Caribbean cataloguing, writing and planning for yet more travel adventures.