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.
fierce pussy’s @fp_1991 new poster work, I got all my sisters with me (2025) and MFA Photo students meeting the collective at Participant Gallery @participantafterdark for a walkthrough and conversation.
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The poster embraces a line from Sister Sledge’s 1979 disco anthem “We Are Family” written by Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers. For the Library of Congress entry on the song Tim Lawrence writes, “on the surface, the lyrics referred to the close relationship enjoyed by the four sisters who laid down the vocals. A little below, they expressed disco’s underlying ethos: to establish the dance floor as a social space that cut across the boundaries of class, creed, gender, nationality, race and sexuality.”
On the occasion of the exhibition arms ache avid aeon: Nancy Brooks Brody / Joy Episalla / Zoe Leonard / Carrie Yamaoka: fierce pussy amplified: Chapter Eight, curated by Jo-ey Tang, at PARTICIPANT INC. @participantafterdark (116 Elizabeth St, New York, March 2 - May 11, 2025), the poster is available for the taking at art organizations across New York City, as a connector of public spaces of New York, where the queer art collective fierce pussy first began their work. Chapter Eight is the latest chapter of an ongoing project that explores the resonances between the individual practices of the four artists in relation to their collaborative work.
Collaborating venues include: American Academy of Arts and Letters, Center for Art, Research and Alliances (CARA), Giorno Poetry Systems, Housing Works, KARMA Bookstore, The Kitchen, Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, Light Industry, MoMA PS1, Performance Space New York, Pratt Institute’s Photography Department, Printed Matter, and Triple Canopy.
@fp_1991 #nancybrooksbrody @jepisalla #zoeleonard @carrie.yamaoka @participantafterdark @thenotarypublic @artsandlettersnyc @cara_the_org @giorno_poetry_systems @housingworks @karmabookstore @thekitchen_nyc @leslielohmanmuseum @lightindustry @momaps1 @performance.space.new.york @printedmatterinc @triple_canopy
Opening NOW ✨ the next round of BFA Thesis Exhibitions, featuring:
Mestizo by Arno Reyes Baetz
He Faced the Silence by Braden Morrison
Supernova by Celia Gossow
Each Stick Smoked a Little and Turned to Ash by Erik Smits
🕔 Opening Reception: today, 5–8PM
🗓️ Tuesday - Friday from 11AM - 5PM.
📍 Pratt Photography Gallery, LL ARC
We hope to see you there!
Congratulations Arno, Braden, Celia, and Erik!
@prattinstitute @soartpratt @arnobaetz @bmorrisonphoto @celyuh @erik_smits_
LAST CHANCE ✨ to catch this week’s round of Senior Thesis Exhibitions, featuring:
Trouble Will Be Everywhere by Noor Shoresh
Bad Order by Sophie Nelson
Electric Cowboy by Adam Dowling
The Troxler Sisters by Danka Latorre
🕚 Open until 5PM, today
📍Pratt Photography Gallery, LL ARC
@prattinstitute @soartpratt @_noor_shoresh @jurassic.technology @adam.r.dowling @13danka
APPLY for our 2025 Open Call Student Exhibitions ✨
We are excited to invite students to apply to exhibit your work in the Pratt Photography Gallery in the Fall of 2025.
Please see the LINK in bio for details on how to submit.
Alumni from 2019 - 2024 are also encouraged to apply.
DEADLINE: Wednesday, April 17 by 12PM
@prattinstitute @soartpratt
Opening NOW ✨ the next round of BFA Thesis Exhibitions, featuring:
Trouble Will Be Everywhere by Noor Shoresh
Electric Cowboy by Adam Dowling
The Troxler Sisters by Danka Latorre
Bad Order by Sophie Nelson
🕔 Opening Reception: today, 5–8PM
🗓️ Tuesday - Friday from 11AM - 5PM.
📍 Pratt Photography Gallery, LL ARC
We hope to see you there!
Congratulations Noor, Adam, Danka, and Sophie 👏
@prattinstitute @soartpratt @_noor_shoresh @adam.r.dowling @13danka @jurassic.technology
We’re saddened to share the news of the passing of Paul McDonough (1941-2025).
Paul taught photography at Pratt for over 40 years, and his influence on our community is deep and far-reaching.
The lifelong friendships formed with faculty, staff, and students alike are a testament to how missed he’ll be.
His dedication to teaching and to photography was so appreciated. It was no secret among students that getting to take a class with Paul was special.
We will never forget his warmth, his generosity with his time, his jokes, and his vests.
His photographs are just as kind as he was—full of life, exciting gesture, and poignant moments, most often found in the street. As much as they share insight on an approach to photography, they share an approach to seeing the world. They will continue his teaching far beyond today.
When asked in an interview for Visura Magazine by Guy Anglade: “What is the one lasting impression you want to leave with your photos?”, Paul answered: “He looked at life as he passed by, with an avid, sympathetic eye.”
He usually said it best.
Our hearts are with everyone who knew him. ❤️
#PaulMcDonough @prattinstitute
LAST CHANCE ✨ to catch this week’s round of Senior Thesis Exhibitions, featuring:
we’ll tiptoe to the sun by Haley Sessoms
A Hollow House in a Sea Of Static by Lili Perih
there is a heaven below the earth by Francesca Kula
Let’s Never Come Here Again Because It Would Never Be As Much Fun by Michaela Cusin
🕚 Open until 5PM, today
📍Pratt Photography Gallery, LL ARC
@prattinstitute @soartpratt @haley.sessoms @liliperih @francescakula @michaela.cusin
Opening TODAY ✨ the next round of BFA Thesis Exhibitions, featuring:
we’ll tiptoe to the sun by Haley Sessoms
A Hollow House in a Sea Of Static by Lili Perih
there is a heaven below the earth by Francesca Kula
Let’s Never Come Here Again Because It Would Never Be As Much Fun by Michaela Cusin
🕔 Opening Reception: today, 5–8PM
🗓️ Tuesday - Friday from 11AM - 5PM.
📍 Pratt Photography Gallery, LL ARC
We hope to see you there!
Congratulations Haley, Lili, Fran, and Michaela 👏
@prattinstitute @soartpratt @haley.sessoms @liliperih @francescakula @michaela.cusin
LAST CHANCE ✨ to catch this week’s round of Senior Thesis Exhibitions, featuring:
MATTER! by Jalin Kolen
Coming into Style and Queerness by Jazmin Chapman
From You to Me: My Eternal Spring by Claudia Lobdell
Follow the Noise by Athena Christian
🕚 Open until 5PM, today
📍Pratt Photography Gallery, LL ARC
@prattinstitute @soartpratt @jalinsphoto @j.loranne
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.
