As a 1971 graduate of Franklin Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, Gary Samson began his professional career in photography and filmmaking at UNH. Since 1971 when he began working at UNH as the Photo Lab Technician, then Staff Photographer, and finally as University Filmmaker and Manager of Photography in 1985, he has been documenting the people, places and events that comprise University life in Durham.

Photography and filmmaking assignments for the University over the years have occasionally taken Samson off campus to Peru, Ireland, Labrador, Belize, and the lawn of the White House. Since 1982 he has taught courses as part of the Certificate in Photography Program at the New Hampshire Institute of Art.

With grants from the NH Humanities Council he has organized and mounted permanent and traveling shows on such diverse topics as 20th Century Shaker life at Canterbury Village, The Knitting Mill Industry of the Lakes Region and Labor and Recreation in Manchester, NH.

Samson is also recognized as an accomplished fine arts photographer. In 1984 he received a fellowship from the NH Council on the Arts based on his black and white portraits of New Hampshire artists and writers. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Currier Gallery of Art, the New Hampshire Institute of Art, the State of New Hampshire, the Art Galleries at the University of New Hampshire, as well as private collections. In the fall of 1998 his work was included in the exhibition Moments in Time: Master Photographs from the Currier Gallery of Art.

Samson's public service activities currently include serving on the board of the Fanco American Centre in Manchester and serving as State Juror of Photography for the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen.