Sam Hsiaomei Lee is a photographer and journalist in New York City. She is a member of Women Photograph, and a fellow in Baxter St Camera Club's 2025 Be Like Water cohort.

 

In photography, writing, and video, she pursues stories involving religion, politics, culture and the ways they overlap, as well as questions of heritage, human rights, and social justice. 

 

In her work, she looks to create understanding between herself, subjects, and their audiences, and is always curious about what is most important to others.

 

She is drawn to topics as close to home as New York City and as far as the West Bank and Israel. She has covered the story of New York City's only Palestinian Christian minister and his congregation for Al Jazeera, photographed a bereaved family who honors their son while running a beloved diner in the Catskill Mountains, and documented her family's Chinese New Year traditions for Business Insider. During her senior thesis, she traveled throughout the West Bank and across Tennessee and Texas – first recording Palestinians’ hopes and fears for the future and what they want Americans to know, then looking to understand how some Christians in the United States have become entangled both spiritually and politically with Israeli Jews, Palestinian Muslims, and Christians across the world.