MA Photography
Introduction
Art and industry combine on this innovative, practice-based postgraduate course, designed to develop your creative promise, deepen your experience of photography and moving image, and optimise both your artistic and professional potential.
Taught by award-winning artists, photographers and leading academics in the field, our distinctive, practice-based MA in Photography will allow you to explore the diverse applications of the medium, and to deepen your understanding of photography as a discipline.
Through a course of intensive study, creative practice, and professional engagement, you will develop the passion that brought you to photography in the first place, and will be supported in the development and production of innovative work, whilst also building skills to maximise and contextualise your creative outputs.
Collaborative opportunities
Our partnerships with Bristol Photography Festival and IC Visual Lab, two highly reputable Bristol-based photography organisations with national and international influence, will provide you with a wide range of work experience placements and live briefs to work on. You'll also have access to industry talks and events, opportunities to display your work at prestigious exhibitions and venues and high-level industry mentorships.
The course includes guest-lectures, intensive week-long workshops, practice-based interactive activities, and individual portfolio reviews with professional practitioners and industry leaders, including curators, editors, publishers, producers, art buyers, agents, gallerists and designers.
You will have opportunities to meet with, share work with, and initiate long-lasting professional relationships with influential professionals within the creative industries.
Careers / Further study
This MA Photography course will enable you to contextualise your practice within relevant professional environments, such as research, education, exhibition, curation, project management, marketing, art direction, publishing and design.
You will be ready to work professionally and independently, using the experience, networks and opportunities offered by the course to act as a springboard to obtain commissions.
You will also be equipped to go on to work in other fields such as studio production, publishing, art direction, curating or picture editing.
Introduction
Art and industry combine on this innovative, practice-based postgraduate course, designed to develop your creative promise, deepen your experience of photography and moving image, and optimise both your artistic and professional potential.
Taught by award-winning artists, photographers and leading academics in the field, our distinctive, practice-based MA in Photography will allow you to explore the diverse applications of the medium, and to deepen your understanding of photography as a discipline.
Through a course of intensive study, creative practice, and professional engagement, you will develop the passion that brought you to photography in the first place, and will be supported in the development and production of innovative work, whilst also building skills to maximise and contextualise your creative outputs.
Collaborative opportunities
Our partnerships with Bristol Photography Festival and IC Visual Lab, two highly reputable Bristol-based photography organisations with national and international influence, will provide you with a wide range of work experience placements and live briefs to work on. You'll also have access to industry talks and events, opportunities to display your work at prestigious exhibitions and venues and high-level industry mentorships.
The course includes guest-lectures, intensive week-long workshops, practice-based interactive activities, and individual portfolio reviews with professional practitioners and industry leaders, including curators, editors, publishers, producers, art buyers, agents, gallerists and designers.
You will have opportunities to meet with, share work with, and initiate long-lasting professional relationships with influential professionals within the creative industries.
Careers / Further study
This MA Photography course will enable you to contextualise your practice within relevant professional environments, such as research, education, exhibition, curation, project management, marketing, art direction, publishing and design.
You will be ready to work professionally and independently, using the experience, networks and opportunities offered by the course to act as a springboard to obtain commissions.
You will also be equipped to go on to work in other fields such as studio production, publishing, art direction, curating or picture editing.
Requirements
Modules
- Structure
- Content
- The MA Fine Art: Photography course gives you the opportunity to develop a range of creative, conceptual, technical and professional skills. You'll study a curriculum carefully sequenced to deliver a dynamic student journey over three intensive terms.
- In the first term, you'll be encouraged to establish a critical disciplinary fluency, effectively positioning your practice within contemporary photography discourses and developing an individual process of inquiry. At the end of the first term, you'll explore and connect arts research and discourse across a community of postgraduate peers. This will result in the presentation of bold, change-making creative proposals.
- In the second term, you'll have the opportunity to advance your personal photographic practice through professional, creative, and/or material development.
- Refinement of your skills and understanding will culminate in presentation of a robust body of work and a considered proposal for further inquiry. This leads into the third term, where you will have the opportunity to realise your ideas within a supportive community of interdisciplinary practice, technical expertise, and academic criticality when completing your final project.
- You'll present your work to the public at our MA Showcase.
- Throughout the year, you'll develop your understanding of enterprise within the creative industries and develop knowledge of the contemporary character and conventions of the creative economy. You'll have the opportunity to refine your professional skills, attributes and identity in preparation to succeed in an uncertain and complex cultural landscape.
- The University continually enhances our offer by responding to feedback from our students and other stakeholders, ensuring the curriculum is kept up to date and our graduates are equipped with the knowledge and skills they need for the real world. This may result in changes to the course. If changes to your course are approved, we'll inform you.
- Learning and Teaching
- Our family of MA Fine Art courses work together in an interdisciplinary learning environment. This approach nurtures collaboration and knowledge exchange across different fields of study, allowing students to deepen their expertise within their chosen discipline whilst engaging with broader artistic creative and critical perspectives.
- Taught by a team with expertise across a breadth of creative practice, you'll learn to understand and push the boundaries of discipline through technical and theoretical input. You will study through a combination of lectures, seminars, workshops, tutorials, and studio practice, and you'll also benefit from events with industry experts.
- As you realise a substantial body of work, you will be encouraged to pursue ambitious new directions. Through ongoing portfolio reviews with professional practitioners and industry leaders, including curators, editors, publishers, producers, art buyers, agents and gallerists, our MA Fine Art: Photography students benefit from extensive real-world feedback on their developing practice. Our considerable alumni network of postgraduate photographers provides a collegiate launchpad for those graduating from the course.
- See our glossary of teaching and learning terms.
- Study time
- This is a full-time course, which starts in September and runs for three terms over 12 months. Learning and teaching sessions typically take place over three days per week. Outside of your contact hours, you'll have the opportunity to access the available resources.
- Assessment
- You will be assessed through a range of methods throughout the year including presentations, portfolio, and practical and written work. You'll spend your last term working towards your final outcomes for the year, which includes an opportunity to exhibit publicly.
- Learn more about our assessments.
