In 2019, storyteller and travel photographer Christopher Wilton-Steer travelled 25,000 miles, tracing the Silk Road overland, with his journey recently brought to life in a new book. We sat down with him to chat about the creative career path that led him to this standout achievement.

Name: Christopher Wilton-Steer

Degree course: MA History of Art

Year of graduation: 2006

At the moment

What is your current role, and how did you get there?

I’m currently based in Nairobi, Kenya, living in an area called Nyari with my family. Here, I work as the Global Lead for Communications for the Aga Khan Foundation.

The Aga Khan Foundation is a charitable organisation working to improve the quality of life of marginalised communities. I’ve worked with them for over 12 years. It operates in over 20 countries, primarily in Central and South Asia, Eastern Africa and the Middle East and it’s very much rooted in all the regions where it works. For most of my time with the organisation, I’ve been based in London but the various roles I’ve held have taken me to countries all over the world. My recent move to Nairobi was fuelled by my interest to work directly on the ground and in one of the contexts where we implement programmes, as opposed to working on projects from a distance.

Apart from being responsible for overseeing our organisation’s everyday communications and our overarching strategy, a significant part of my role is to also translate the work that we do into stories that our global audiences can understand.

I’m also an independent travel photographer. My photography journey began in 2011 when I started taking photos on early iPhone model on a trip to Hong Kong and started to really enjoy the process of taking, curating and editing photos. I mostly photographed buildings, because I love architecture. When I returned, I decided to get a basic DSLR camera and started taking more and more photos.

My role in the Aga Khan Foundation frequently required travel to remote project sites, which provided the perfect canvas to refine my photography skills. I started working with the Foundation in March 2013, and by August, I was visiting Tajikistan in Central Asia to document the opening of a new energy project we were supporting in the Pamir Mountains. The photos and stories I produced were well received. There was an enormous appetite for this kind of content within the organisation so soon after different parts of the organisation were asking me in to visit their country and document other AKF projects. These experiences gave me the unique opportunity to mix my professional work with my personal artistic interests, slowly carving out my own space as a photographer.

What inspired your interest in this field?

I studied History of Art at the University of Edinburgh. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do but I was interested in the visual arts and so thought this could be a exciting degree for me. My elder sister had studied Art History and was working in the creative world. So she showed me a path forward.

One the courses I took was called Islam and Art. I can’t recall why I chose it but I would say it had a profound impact on me. There were only about 10 of us in the class and we were being taught by one of the leading academics in this field, Professor Robert Hillenbrand. He introduced us to art and architecture from parts of the world that receive very little attention in art history. Our attention was taken away from New York, Paris and London and was now directed at Damascus, Isfahan, Baghdad and Balkh. It was a real eye opener. As so little had been written about art and architecture in many of the places we studied, the onus was on us to analyse and interpret which was tremendously exciting. This experience was certainly one of the reasons that led to my interest in working for the Aga Khan Foundation seven years later.

After graduation, I had an amazing opportunity to go and intern for Penguin Random House in Beijing. Working at the other end our Eurasia was another experience that led to my interest in travelling across it. I’d often look out of the window on the flights back and forth and think about the world below me and how little I knew about it.

Career journey

What were some key milestones in your career journey?

While I was in Beijing, I worked on a guide book for the 2008 Olympic Games. This meant working closely with a design studio. I absolutely loved it: the studio, the creatives, the work they produced. I wanted to work for them but they were a start up and could only offer me an internship and not a salary which I really needed by this point. They suggested I move back to London, one of the great creative centres, and look for jobs in the creative industry there. So I did and ended up working in a communications and business development capacity for a branding agency. While I loved the creativity of the studio, after a few years, I lost interest in the work which I didn’t feel a great affinity toward, our clients were big FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) and corporate brands. I wanted to find greater purpose, so I quit and I started a Master’s degree in Urban Planning at University College London. I’d always loved architecture but – now in my late 20s – wasn’t confident about starting a long architecture degree. Urban Planning seemed the next best thing. As part of my master’s degree, I was fortunate to spend some time in Hong Kong to work on my dissertation.

I graduated in 2011. Following the financial crisis, it was so hard to find a job. For every opening there seemed to be hundreds of applicants. I was quite despondent at that time wondering if I had made a big mistake. Eventually, I landed an internship at a sort of urban consultants firm; I was as a facilitator, bringing together architecture firms, planners, urban designers, developers etc. I worked there for a year, but it wasn’t a particularly good experience – I worked in basement without windows and had to move the office twice without help – and I didn’t feel like it was advancing me in any way. It was a real low point in my career. So, I decided to expand my job search beyond urban planning and architecture.

This led me to discover a research/communications position for the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF), an international development organisation focused on improving the quality of life of disadvantaged communities regardless of faith or origin. A friend of mine who’d worked in Afghanistan for the UN had mentioned their name to me and said he thought I’d find AKF of interest. I didn’t know anything about international development but the more I read about AKF, and all the interesting places they work across Africa, Asia and the Middle East, the more it appealed to me. I felt an affinity with the organisation and its values. I applied for the role and never heard anything. Six months later, I saw the role being advertised again. I called them up and asked if it was worth me applying again since I hadn’t heard from them the first time. The person on the phone – now a good friend of mine! – told me to send some examples of my design work this time. So I did and got an interview. I learnt then how important it is when applying for roles to share actual work you do to demonstrate what you can do. That’s what can make you stand out. I got an interview. Then had about seven more interviews – the CEO then had an unusual approach! – and eventually got the job. I was deliriously happy to be able to leave behind my frankly awful job and begin something that sounded so exciting. I started working for AKF on 4 March 2013. My attempt to have a career as an urban planner had failed but it had led me to this point. It didn’t wholly make sense but I was grateful to be where I was.

The staff at our office in the UK were – and still are – a very international bunch. I was exposed to lots of different nationalities, languages and customs. It was wonderful. Our world was Central Asia – Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan – South Asia – Pakistan, India – East Africa – Mozambique, Madagascar and so on. People spoke about Dushanbe, Kampala and Aswan with the same familiarity as Picadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square! It was eye-opening. I could see a whole world open out before me. I said to myself, if you can do well in this job, I think you’re going to be here for a while. Within a few months I was off on a communications mission to document the inauguration of a new hydroelectric power station and energy lines in the Pamir mountains of Tajikistan and Afghanistan. I couldn’t believe my luck.

Photography was something I have begun to get interested in a few years before. So, I would take my camera on these missions to document our work and so I could create communications materials. People liked the photos and so asked me to visit this country and that project to document more of our work. Soon I was travelling all over our geographies – which are invariably remote and fascinating places – to photograph our work and tell stories about it. It was wonderful. The mission of the Foundation to help those less fortunate and the passion and dedication of my colleagues gave me a real sense of purpose – what I had been looking for – and I was proud of the work I was producing and that I could contribute in some small way to the Foundation’s mission.

As the years past and my experience in the sector and within communications grew, I came up the ranks. I went from Research and Communications Officer, to Communications Manager, to Senior Communications Manager, the Head of Communications in the UK, to then Global Lead for Communications. Now, based in Kenya, I am helping build out the communications capacity and capabilities of our parent organisation – the Aga Khan Development Network – in East Africa.

How did your time at the University shape your professional path?

At Edinburgh, as part of my Art History degree, I studied Islamic Art for one year. I’m not sure what compelled me to choose it but it had an enormous impact on my career as I look back. It began to open up a whole world to me that I really didn’t know much about. I remember doing that course with Professor Robert Hillenbrand who was so inspiring and knowledgeable. He’d travelled extensively across the Islamic world and written dozens of books on Islamic art and architecture. Comparatively very little has been written on this subject despite the extraordinary contributions of the Islamic world to art and architecture (not to mention mathematics, the sciences, and astronomy) compared to European art. So this meant us students needed to research, analyse and think about it in a totally different way compared to other areas of art. Professor Hillenbrand really encouraged that. He deeply influenced my understanding the world and Islam’s contribution to it. When the Aga Khan Foundation job came along, one with a unique footprint in the Islamic world, it meant I was interested in it and perhaps AKF were more receptive to me.

Additionally, I would say studying art for several years gave me a strong understanding of light, composition and colour which has inevitably informed my approach to photography which has become a major part of my job.

Can you share a standout achievement or moment you’re proud of?

A standout achievement I’d mention is my recent photography project called ‘The Silk Road: A Living History’. This project is really the culmination of studying art and architectural history and especially Islamic art, living and working in China, my love of photography and travel and then working at the Foundation.

I had an idea about an exhibition that allowed people to walk from one end of Eurasia to the other through photographs and travelling along the trade routes that have connected one end of Eurasia to the other for over 2,000 years. Along this journey people could encounter the people, places and cultures along the way both experiencing their diversity and differences but also considering what we share and what it is that connects us.

I first pitched this idea to my boss as a sabbatical – something I would do independently – but I also mentioned that it could also be a story about the work that we do in the various countries AKF works in along the Silk Road. He liked that idea so, to my great fortune, it became a work project.

The project saw me travelling 25,000 miles (40,000 km) overland from London to Beijing, crossing 16 countries. The culmination was a large scale outdoor exhibition in King’s Cross in London. And then earlier this year, it was published as a book, with all proceeds going to support the work of the Aga Khan Foundation.

Alumni wisdom

What do you wish you had known at the start of your career?

Not to put too much pressure on myself to pick the right career straight away. The idea of going into the work world really terrified me and my mental health in my last year of university was in a bad state. I really didn’t know who I was or what I should be doing. It felt incredibly daunting. Every decision felt so consequential. Looking back now, it really wasn’t.

I could have helped myself by being more organised in the holidays and getting internships to try out different sectors and roles. I think this would have helped me develop a clearer idea of what actually motivated and excited me and how I might transfer my interests into the professional world.

Once you know this, it’s much easier to find a career that is meaningful to you.

What advice would you give to students or alumni looking to enter your field?

If it’s communications, I would encourage students and alumni to develop hard skills – like copywriting, web development, advanced social media content development skills, social media analytics, filmmaking, photography etc – alongside a theoretical or academic approach to communications. Yes, the latter matters if you want to bring sophistication to a communications role (I’m assuming, I never actually studied communications) but the hard skills will give you something concrete you can offer that otherwise you’d need to pay an external consultant to do. If you can offer it in-house, it’s a real bonus for some employers.

Are there any books, podcasts, or resources that have influenced you?

Books that are pertinent to my career:

• The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia – Peter Hopkirk
• Empires of the Indus – Alice Albinia
• Return of the King: The Battle for Afghanistan – William Dalrymple
• Seven Pillars of Wisdom – T.E. Lawrence
• Shadow of the Silk Road – Colin Thubron
• The Silk Roads: A New History of the World – Peter Frankopan
• Jupiter’s Travels: Four years around the world on a triumph – Ted Simon
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance – Robert Pirsig
• On the Road – Jack Kerouac
• The Islamic Enlightenment – Christopher de Bellaigue
• Professor Robert Hillenbrand’s books
• Istanbul: Memories and the City – Orhan Pamuk
• The Road to Oxiana – Robert Byron
• The Places in Between – Rory Stewart

More

🔗 Edinburgh College of Art

🔗 Christopher’s website (external)

🔗 Photo essay: From London to Beijing on the old Silk Road

🔗 ‘The Silk Road: A Living History’ book (external)

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