Photography today is an interdisciplinary, experimental and research-based discipline. Students working with us will make image-based work in a challenging and supportive environment, expanding and developing their ideas as working and thinking artists.
At Pratt, photography is a medium that inspires critical thinking. You will explore the photographic medium at the intersections of language, philosophy and critical theory within the various disciplines that comprise contemporary art. As a student, you’ll examine the medium in its varied forms and think critically about its impact on our society and culture. Faculty will help you as you realize your artistic goals, develop your singular voice, and engage with photography as a cultural discourse.
The Photography MFA curriculum encourages material exploration, the unlearning of images, and a curiosity about how the work we make relates to our cultural conditions. We welcome artists with interests in contemporary art practices—of all varieties—that rely heavily on the role of photographic imagery and imaging. This can include artists who use lens-based cameras; photosensitive materials and/or sensors; re-photography, aggregation, and quotation; and all approaches that fall under the realm of the photographic—including research and critical positions with relation to the histories and practices of photography, both still and moving.
Guest Artists
The Pratt Photography Talk Series and Visiting Artists Lecture Series provide robust opportunities each year for talks and individual studio visits with visiting relevant artists, critics, curators, and writers. Each spring, the MFA in Photography hosts a distinguished artist as a visiting critic.
Our studio, lab, equipment, and shop resources are situated within the contemporary art context of Brooklyn and wider NYC, where our community of students and faculty engage in a rich learning and art-making environment.
Studios and Facilities
Photography and Fine Arts graduate students have new individual studios near the main Brooklyn campus at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in building, Dock 72. In addition, they have use of dedicated fabrication shops, temporary exhibition spaces, seminar rooms, and a student lounge. The Photography Department, on the main Brooklyn campus, offers a full range of state-of-the-art facilities in support of the MFA in Photography. Learn more about our photography facilities.
Learning Resources
You’ll be immersed in a cohesive community and enmeshed in the city that surrounds us. Small class sizes, close faculty mentorship, and learning resources provide the support you’ll need to take full advantage of all that New York City has to offer.
Core MFA Photography faculty currently include Program Director Sara Greenberger Rafferty, Carlos Jimenez Cahua, and Allen Frame. Affiliated faculty include the Chair of the Photography Department Shannon Ebner, Shirley Bruno, Anna Collette, Milagros de la Torre, Nick Relph, Carla Shapiro, and Sara VanDerBeek in addition to Fine Arts faculty teaching core and elective classes throughout the interdisciplinary program. See all Photography faculty and administrators.
“You’ll be amongst the most intelligent, responsive, caring, and engaged faculty possible. You’ll have access to excellent facilities, and the opportunity to take classes that push you outside of your comfort zone, while still honing your specific processes and craft.”
Nic Anselmo (he/him), MFA Photography ’23
Our Alumni
As a new MFA program, our alumni are a small group of tight-knit artists. Most alumni stay in and around Brooklyn, entering a community of artists and thinkers that engage in contemporary discourse and practices.
“My practice is centered around unanswerable questions. How are our identities formed through visual culture? What do collective cultural traumas and experiences feel like inside other people’s bodies? Alongside obsessive research, I employ strategies of the archive, the re-make, and impersonation, to create images and videos that collapse history with the present and offer possible answers, if only for a fleeting moment.”
“If you come to Pratt, you will know how amazing this big family is. They teach me technical details, we always criticize each other enthusiastically, I can feel the vitality and rich knowledge of each person. I learn a lot from them.”
Shengqi Ming (he/him), MFA Photography ’23
Ready for More?
HERE’S HOW TO APPLY
OUR CAMPUS & BEYOND
Join us at Pratt. Learn more about admissions requirements, plan your visit, talk to a counselor, and start your application. Apply here.
You’ll find yourself at home at Pratt. Learn more about our student organizations, athletics, gallery exhibitions, events, the amazing City of New York, and our Brooklyn neighborhood communities. More info here.
Join us for events, follow us online, and learn more about Pratt’s impact in the world.
✨ Join us for our next round of Open Call shows, opening TODAY and FRIDAY, featuring:
This is what I love by Mia Giuliani
Opening reception today @ 6PM
Glory Hole by Eve Beatrice Weiner
Opening reception today @ 6PM
Hope Creek: An Emergency Group Show by SOAP Magazine
Opening reception Friday 11/22 @ 5PM
🗓️ Open through December 6th
🕔 Monday - Friday 11AM - 5PM
📍 Pratt Photography Gallery, LL ARC
Congratulations to all the artists! 👏
@prattinstitute @soartpratt @miagiuliani @evebweiner @_noor_shoresh @soapmagaz1ne
Our Lunchtime Talk Series continues this Tuesday, 11/19 with Tori Purcell ✨
These talks are a chance for students and peers to hear from Photography Department faculty and staff, as they share their work.
Please feel free to bring your lunch—we hope you’ll join us! ☺️
🗓️ Tuesday, November 19th
🕐 1:00PM
📍E-4, LL ARC
@prattinstitute @soartpratt
✨Today’s the LAST day to catch this series of Open Call exhibitions, featuring:
Calle Quince by Athena Christian, Lewis James, Claudia Lobdell, Nick Silva, Taliver Woodlief, and Viva Vadim
It’s shit here, but it’s ours. by Zach Hussein
Forever Here by Jehan Rana
📍 Pratt Photography Gallery, LL ARC
🕚 Open until 5PM today!
@prattinstitute @soartpratt
Join us TODAY for our Photography Talk Series featuring Howie Chen ✨
🗓️ Wednesday, November 13th
🕑 2PM
📍 E-2, LL ARC
We hope to see you there!
@prattinstitute @soartpratt
Happening NOW: Sony Vendor Visit ✨
Swing by the front of the LL ARC from 12-3PM to check out some Sony gear and ask the reps any questions you may have. 📸
TOMORROW: Lunchtime Talk with Stephanie Powell ✨
We are pleased to announce the next talk in our Lunchtime Talk Series! A chance for students and peers to hear from Photography Department faculty and staff, as they share their work.
Bring your lunch and join us! ☺️
🗓️ Tomorrow, Tuesday, November 12th
🕐 1:00PM
📍E-4, LL ARC
@prattinstitute @soartpratt @steph_rei
Our Vendor Visit series continues: Sony will be in the front hallway of the ARC LL on November 12th from 12:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
They will have a few different models to test and look at, and two Sony representatives will be available to answer any questions.
Opening TONIGHT, Pratt MFA Photo Alumna Rachel Handlin’s “strangers are friends I haven’t met yet” ✨
🗓️ Opening Reception, 11/8 (Open through 12/21)
🕕 6-8PM
📍 White Columns Gallery, 91 Horatio St.
Rachel received her BFA from CalArts in 2020 and her MFA in Photography from Pratt Institute in 2024. As a part of her ongoing project, Rachel has traveled the world to meet and document other individuals with Down syndrome who are either currently studying at University or who have already received college degrees: a group that Rachel has described as “… a community that didn’t know it was a community.” Only twenty-three adults worldwide with Down syndrome have earned a college degree.
Congratulations, Rachel! 👏
@prattinstitute @soartpratt @handlinrachel @white_columns
We will be hosting a virtual Pratt MFA in Photography Information Session next week!
🗓️ Thursday, November 14, 2024
🕛 12PM EST
📍 RSVP for Zoom Link: https://tinyurl.com/Nov14PPMFA (Link in bio)
The session will be lead by interim director, Sara VanDerBeek, Ming Jin (class of 2025), Liv Dawson (class of 2025) & Chloe Scout Nix (class of 2024).
All those interested in the program are invited to attend—we hope to see you there!
@prattinstitute @soartpratt
The 60-credit curriculum includes a wide variety of core and elective studio courses, along with a complement of liberal arts offerings geared toward artists. The core curriculum, largely shared with the general MFA in Fine Arts, includes required courses in Studio Practice and Theory, Thesis, and Graduate Symposium. For Photography majors, the curriculum includes Acts of Recognition, a seminar that introduces perspectives on art, ethics, visual culture, race, and equity. This required course focuses on photography and lens-based media and the politics of representation through art history, cultural studies, critical race theory, gender studies, and queer studies.
The student’s studio experience is augmented by the Visiting Artists Lecture Series and the Pratt Photography Talks, which together bring approximately 12 relevant artists and scholars to campus per year for talks and studio visits.
In addition, students participate in periodic and constructive interdisciplinary reviews: Survey in their second semester, Public Critique in their third, and Preview in their final semester. During the course of the program, there are robust opportunities for individual studio visits with visiting artists, critics, curators, and writers, as well as exhibition and open studio opportunities here in Brooklyn.
The program culminates in the capstone Thesis, which incorporates both an exhibition and writing representing individual artist’s works.
Expression (Artwork)
Artist conveys meaning based on their research, vision, and craft. That meaning is clear in the relationship of the work to the meta work such as speech or text. The evidence of meaning includes the production of knowledge within their work.
Expansion
Artist is open to a rigorous and evolving exploration of the potential for the work.
Research
Artist engages in an open and experimental approach to visual, textual, contextual, sensory, and material approaches in their work. Artist embraces risks, failure, and digression.
Context
Artist’s statements and artwork express a relationship with an internal (ie. personal history) or an external (ie. social history) space of meaning. This can include synthesis of art history, criticism, and analysis into the studio work.
Connection or Community
Artist and work engender a meaningful relationship with other artists, citizens, and individuals or groups which enhances the meaning of the work and the experience for the audience or public, as defined by the project.
