A Bit About Sam Faulkner- London Photographer & Director 

A few days after my last exam, I threw a battered old Canon and a few rolls of Tri-X into a backpack and took the long way to Afghanistan. It was 1994, and the feuding mujahideen were tearing each other apart while the world looked away. I had no real plan—no idea how I was going to get into the country, let alone back out. But I wanted an adventure and a shot at being a photographer.

I slept under the stars alongside teenage fighters who had never met a foreigner before. At night, we shared greasy mutton soup and watched tracer rounds and rockets silently rain on distant Kabul. By day, we skirted the front lines south of the capital, crouching behind low mud walls as bullets whistled overhead. I was utterly dependent on a band of fighters loyal to the notorious warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Sometimes I wondered if they’d ever let me go. But one dawn, they simply drove me back to the Pakistan border. My Afghan holiday was over, with just four rolls of film to show for it. But those images won the Sunday Times Ian Parry Scholarship, and the real adventure began.

Today, I’m a London Photographer & Director specialising in TV commercials, represented by Great Guns. My roots in reportage continue to shape my work, as seen in projects like “Unseen Waterloo,” my first monograph published to coincide with my exhibition at Somerset House, London, marking the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. I live in London with my wife and our two children, still chasing stories, though perhaps now with a bit more of a plan.