Born 1950 in Helsinki and currently resident there.
Sammallahti is highly acclaimed in Europe and recognized as a leading Finnish photographer. While teaching at the University of Art and Design in Helsinki until 1991, he turned his efforts to training young artists. On winning a government grant, he left teaching and has since devoted himself to creative activities as a photographer.
Much of Sammallahti´s work consists of black-and-white photographs of people and animals in everyday situations depicted against the backdrop of nature. Their interest lies in his attention to the lifestyles of locales visited and the people encountered there, rather in than in producing reportorial records of events. In addition to Finland, he has visited Russia, Ireland, Hungary, China, Japan, Nepal and Britain, and photographed the people and societies nurtured in their soils and the natural scenery of those countries. He is currently engaged in a project on the theme of Helsinki.
Sammallahti´s work has been widely shown in his own Finland and the rest of Scandinavia, and since the late 1990´s also in France, Britain and the United States. His work is currently included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris and the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.