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 Interim Director Sara VanDerBeek, Carlos Jimenez Cahua, and Allen Frame. Affiliated faculty include the Chair of the Photography Department Shannon Ebner, Shirley Bruno, Milagros de la Torre, Nick Relph, Carla Shapiro, and Joshua Kolbo 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.
Opening TODAY ✨ the next round of BFA Thesis Exhibitions:
Mia Ojos Son Tus Ojos by Edward Hernandez
Somos de Aqui y de Allá by Maria Montes
Pegados by Isabela Frigerio
no sabo girl by Ashley Carvajal
🕔 Opening Reception: today, 5–8PM
🗓️ Tuesday - Friday from 11AM - 5PM.
📍 Pratt Photography Gallery, LL ARC
Congratulations Edward, Maria, Isabela, and Ashley 👏
@prattinstitute @soartpratt @edwardhernandezz @mariamontesfotos @bela5_ @ashleycarvajall
TOMORROW: Our Photography Talk Series continues with An-My Lê ✨
🗓️ Tuesday, March 4th
🕛 12PM
📍 E-2 Lecture Hall, LL ARC
We hope to see you there! 👏
@prattinstitute @soartpratt @anmynx
LAST CHANCE ✨ to catch this week’s round of Senior Thesis Exhibitions, featuring:
My Saving Grace by Vasili Sakkos
Maybe You Would Have Disintegrated Under The Sun by Trinity Vu
As the night cast down from heaven by Haozhe (Alvin) Wang
Resonance by Alexia Santamaria
🕚 Open 10AM - 5PM, today
📍Pratt Photography Gallery, LL ARC
@prattinstitute @soartpratt @vasiliarts @alvin_is_here__ @mbunnybear
✨ TONIGHT: Pablo Delano will present his talk, The Museum of the Old Colony, organized by our Pratt in Puerto Rico Program.
🗓️ Wednesday, 2/26
🕖 7 - 8:30PM
📍 Film/Video Screening Room (FV 102)
The event is open to the entire Pratt Community—RSVP via the link in our bio!
Pablo Delano is a visual artist born and raised in Puerto Rico. He works in the mediums of installation, photography and assemblage. Appropriating archival imagery, film footage and found objects, Delano created the immersive conceptual art installation titled The Museum of the Old Colony (MotOC), a continually evolving site-specific project exhibited in the Central Pavilion of the Biennale di Venezia 2024. The MotOC is a sweeping indictment of U.S. colonial rule in Puerto Rico from the 1898 invasion to the present. It also examines the complicity of museums in the processes of empire building and colonial control. Delano is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Fine Arts at Trinity College, Hartford, CT, and a founding member of the Center for Caribbean Studies at Trinity.
The event is sponsored by the School of Art, Art and Design Education, Photography, and the Faculty Senate Academic Initiatives Fund.
@prattinstitute @soartpratt @prattarted
Opening TODAY ✨ the next round of BFA Thesis Exhibitions:
Maybe You Would Have Disintegrated Under the Sun by Trinity Vu
My Saving Grace by Vasili Sakkos
Resonance by Alexia Santamaria
As the night cast down from heaven by Haozhe (Alvin) Wang
🕔 Opening Reception: today, 5–8PM
🗓️ Tuesday - Friday from 11AM - 5PM.
📍 Pratt Photography Gallery, LL ARC
Congratulations Trinity, Vasili, Alexia, and Alvin 👏
@prattinstitute @soartpratt @vasiliarts @mbunnybear @alvin_is_here__
There are TWO ✨ more days to catch the second round of our Senior Thesis Exhibitions, featuring:
البارحه بالحلم by Amirah Albalawi
Nurtured by Nature by Perri Sage Lancaster
Two, Two, Two by June Bhattarai
Sixty One by Megan Parisi
🕚 Open 10AM - 5PM, today and tomorrow
📍Pratt Photography Gallery, LL ARC
@prattinstitute @soartpratt @june.pngg @ameera_moawad @perrisage @megpstudio
Our Spring Photography Talk Series begins tomorrow, with Stefanie Hessler ✨
🗓️ Tuesday, February 18th
🕛 12PM
📍 E-2 Lecture Hall, LL ARC
We hope to see you there! 👏
@prattinstitute @soartpratt
There are TWO more days to catch the first of our Senior Thesis Exhibitions, featuring:
What I Owe to You by Kayla Galvan
Palimpsest by Siena Sujitno
What is Skin? by Dominic Paolini
The Desire Within by Ziyang Wang
🕚 Open 10AM - 5PM, today and tomorrow
📍Pratt Photography Gallery, LL ARC
@prattinstitute @soartpratt @_kayla_star_ @siena._photography @dominic_paolini @ziyang_photo
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.
