Samuel Levi Jones was born and raised in Marion, Indiana. Trained as a photographer and multidisciplinary artist, he earned a B.A. in Communication Studies from Taylor University and a B.F.A from Herron School of Art and Design in 2009. He received his MFA in Studio Art from Mills College in 2012.

His work is informed by historical source material and early modes of representation in documentary practice. He explores the framing of power structures and struggles between exclusion and equality by desecrating historical material, then re-imagining new works. Jones investigates issues of manipulation and the rejection of control in a broad sense.

He is the recipient of the 2014 Joyce Alexander Wein artist prize awarded to him by the Studio Museum in Harlem. His work is in prominent private and public collections including SF MOMA, The Whitney, The Rubell Family Collection, LACMA, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields to name a few.