Samson Tu is a Taiwanese-American student admitted to the New York University School of Law. With an undergraduate major in political science and a minor in Media, Culture, and Communication, Samson is writing his thesis on the effects of state violence on civil society development in Mainland China. Samson works as an editorial staff at the Washington Square News, NYU's newspaper. Hoping to incorporate his photographic background into a formal career, Samson plans to study intellectual property law after college. 

August, 2018, Buenos Aires. Outside of the men's restroom of a hotel conference room, an event photographer asked Samson to hold onto his Canon 5D while the photographer took care of business. Samson wanted to see the pictures and accidentally formatted the memory card. It was his first time with a DSLR.

Samson has since learned from his mistake and made thousands of photographs. His photographs have been awarded by Px3, Neutral Density, and International Photography Awards. Samson followed the footsteps of Taiwanese photographers Ethan Lin and Kuo-Chiao Lin before arriving in New York, where he thought he might make it as a street photographer in the city. 

Now Samson is a creative director at the Washington Square News, where he edits photo essays and multimedia projects. His interests range from traditional photojournalism and photo editing to social media management, copywriting, and data journalism. He is currently working on a conceptual multimedia essay about the life of a college student in New York. 

Samson dabbles in philosophy, currently tracing the intellectual lineage of post-structuralism to Kierkegaard and Heidegger. In an unlikely scenario where the world would go silent forever, Samson would like to play a blues guitar solo one last time. 

Reach him at samtu@nyu.edu or @tushingchen on Instagram.