Photography, MFA

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.

A photography student's cluttered studio, with images of the student and by the student, furniture, and multi media

Type: Graduate, MFA
Start Term: Fall Only
Credits: 60
Duration: 2 years
Courses: Plan of Study
School and Department: School of Art,
Photography

Photography at Pratt

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.

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The Experience

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.

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a photography student's work table with images, books, and creative tools

Making and Learning

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.

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A contemporary art gallery with white walls, an open ceiling exposing white-painted pipes, and wooden flooring. The room is illuminated by ceiling-mounted spotlights. Various photographic artworks are displayed on the walls, with images ranging from abstract and blurred portraits to black-and-white conceptual photography. A black bench is positioned in the center of the room, and a white pedestal holding a book or artwork is placed towards the left side. The gallery has a minimalist aesthetic with two white columns supporting the ceiling.

Sara VanDerBeek

Associate Professor

Person

“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.”
Baillie Vensel, MFA Photography ’23

News & Events

New Views and Inspiration for Pratt Artists

Photography Student Brandon Foushee Brings Love & Care to Myrtle Avenue for Black Artstory Month

Article

An Artist Who Has Something in Common With Her Subjects

Press / New York Times

“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.

From the Catalog

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.

Photography at Pratt

The Experience

Guest Artists

Making and Learning

Studios and Facilities

Learning Resources

Application Resources

Our Faculty

Our Alumni

News & Events

Ready for More?

From the Catalog

Sample Courses

Overview

Learning Outcomes

School of Art

Photography