Samantha Davidson ’19 is Rocking the Boston Music Scene as a Concert Photographer
By Sophia Zhou ’26
Not too long ago, Samantha Davidson ’19 was a Concord Academy student methodically developing film in the darkroom in the Math and Arts Center and gushing to friends about her love for the musical duo Twenty One Pilots. Within just a few years, she has twice found herself at their concerts, no longer just a fan but a concert photographer who is helping share their art with the world.
These days, amidst the flurry of motion typical of fast-paced concerts, she’s armed with two digital cameras: one with a wide-angle lens and one with a zoom lens to capture the small but meaningful details. Though her editing process is now different, she has been thinking back on her time as a student of former CA photography teacher Cynthia Katz.
“She was just really welcoming, and definitely inviting, pushing people to explore their passion,” Davidson says, crediting the two classes she took with Katz as the foundation of her photography training. Teen Photo Workshops by Mark Ostow, a photography program Davidson attended the summer after her CA graduation, which Katz recommended, jump-started her involvement in concert photography.
Working in real time in performance spaces has thrown Davidson into unexpected and challenging situations. She recalls one night at an outdoor concert during a rainstorm. With her equipment in mini-raincoats, she hoped to take the best possible photos despite the extreme weather. Weeks later, Javier Reyes, the guitarist of Djo, the band that performed that night, messaged her asking for the photos she had taken at their show. The band ended up choosing those raindrop-lined photos for the recap of their entire summer tour.
Davidson says it felt great that one of her favorite bands was still thinking about her photos weeks after she took them, and she takes pride in capturing the vision of the whole creative team behind a show. She says she loves making art under the conditions of outfits, songs, and lighting that varying individuals picked out and love, and being there to capture the moment in a way that they would want. “Seeing up close every single gem and bead that is sewn onto a dress, seeing the thought and detail, it reminds you that every single artistic medium is connected,” she mentions. “It’s a big collaboration, and it’s just really cool to be a part of that.”
To Davidson, the final piece of this collaboration that makes a full concert experience is the audience: those at the concert for the first time, those who spent months making their outfits, and those lining up for hours to get to the front of the barricade. “I am responsible for so many people’s memories,” she says. “The effort fans put in should be celebrated.” Understanding how magical concert moments are, she loves when her photos allow fans who were there to relive their excitement, and when they help those who didn’t get to attend have a real experience of the concert’s atmosphere.
Davidson’s work has begun earning her recognition, including a nomination for the 2025 Boston Music Awards (BMA) Live Music Photographer of the Year. After hearing the news from CA’s alum newsletter, Katz reached out to Davidson over Instagram, reconnecting with her and extending her congratulations. Katz will surely be thrilled to hear that Davidson’s continued commitment to her craft led to the BMA nominating her once again for the 2026 Live Music Photographer of the Year.
Davidson credits her success with concert photography to starting small and building her portfolio, knowledge, and taste little by little. Looking back, she says that both her childhood love for music and the passion she discovered for photography at CA quietly laid the groundwork for her entry into this specialized photography field.
“It was definitely something that I knew I liked before I knew what it was,” Davidson says. “Even at the concerts before I was a photographer, I was always trying to get the best iPhone photos I could.” Once she realized concert photography was a niche she could pursue professionally, she says she thought, “Of course I’m going to try that out.”
She took these iPhone photos to build her first portfolio, which she used to reach out to local bands. As her gear transitioned to a beginner Nikon camera and finally to her current dual camera setup, she slowly expanded both her portfolio and her community within Boston’s music photography scene. This allowed Davidson to begin to work larger venues with bigger artists such as the rapper Doechii, pop idol Katy Perry, and the boy-band trio the Jonas Brothers.
But perhaps the night her high school self would have found most meaningful was when, almost 10 years after she first became a fan of Twenty One Pilots, she photographed their show in 2024. Just hours before their concert was scheduled at Boston’s TD Garden, Davidson was browsing through the band’s past artifacts exhibited in their Fan Premier Exhibit. Then, an email popped up in her inbox: She had been approved to shoot the band just hours before their concert at Boston’s TD Garden. One year later, she contributed to their visual story once more.
Beyond concerts, Davidson has captured events ranging from figure skating to basketball to fashion. She recently had her work printed for the first time this May as part of an exhibition held in the Diana Stelin Gallery in Brookline, Mass. Looking ahead, she hopes to celebrate the community she joined years ago as an avid concert-goer and budding photographer by organizing a Boston gallery for concert photographers. She thinks, too, of the first photography community she found, back in Katz’s class. Today, she often brings her film camera to concerts, challenging herself to capture a quality film shot alongside her digitals, and she hopes to bring more 35 mm film back into her practice in the future.
Davidson has returned to CA to photograph campus events, too. She recently meticulously captured each piece of student artwork displayed in the Centennial Arts Center, a full-circle moment that reinspired her.
“Now, more than ever, you are inundated by people who are showing the highlights of their life and showing only the best things, so I definitely think it is really easy to want to compare yourself,” she says, reflecting on her own growth as an artist. “When you’re seeing people who are the best of the best, that’s just a reminder that you have so much more growing to do. That’s hopefully the best news: Because you love what you’re doing, you’re never done with it.”
