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 NOW ✨ the final round of BFA Thesis Exhibitions, featuring:
Please Touch by Emily Singer
Rattlesnake Kisses and Church Pews by Nick Silva
Girl Pictures by Viva Vadim
As the River Moves by Sierra Petrocelli
🕔 Opening Reception: today, 5–8PM
🗓️ Tuesday - Friday from 11AM - 5PM.
📍 Pratt Photography Gallery, LL ARC
We hope to see you there!
Congratulations Emily, Nick, Viva, and Sierra!
@prattinstitute @soartpratt @emsinger.photo @nicksilvastudio @vivavadim @sierrabreeeze
LAST CHANCE ✨ to catch this week’s round of Senior Thesis Exhibitions, featuring:
Sugarcoat by Perrin Rienert
False Front by Alex Wang
Bonding/Bondage by Yuhan (Nana) Chen
Panoptics by Victoria Chen
🕚 Open until 5PM, today
📍Pratt Photography Gallery, LL ARC
@prattinstitute @soartpratt
Featuring Professor Nick Relph details about the exhibition and event below!#Repost @momaps1 with @use.repost
・・・
“The Gatherers” is now open at MoMA PS1!
In a time of unfettered waste, this exhibition brings together 14 global artists who contend with excess and its effects. “The Gatherers” marks the first time many of these artists have shown in a US museum, debuting new works across sculptural installation, assemblage, painting, video, and performance.
Artists include:
@KarimahAshadu
Tolia Astakhishvili (@toliasta)
Miho Dohi
@AndroEradze
Samuel Hindolo
@Geumhyung_Jeong
Klara Lidén
Jean Katambayi Mukendi
Nick Relph (@relphz)
Selma Selman (@selman.selma)
Ser Serpas (@ser_sera)
@EmilijaSkarnulyte
Zhou Tao
@He Xiangyu_
Celebrate these artists at our Open House, this Saturday, April, 26 from 10 a.m.–6 p.m. Plan your visit at the link in bio!
📸: @marissaalper
Opening TONIGHT: Patiently Waiting ✨ A group show co-curated by Norah Aldossary, featuring work by many Pratt Photo students!
🕖 Opening Reception: April 25 | 7:00–9:00 PM
📆 Exhibition Dates: April 25–28 📍The Blanc, 15 E 40th St., 12th Floor
Congratulations to all involved 👏
Please join us on Monday, April 28th, from 5-8PM for the opening reception of Pratt Photo MFA Thesis Exhibition: In truth? ✨
Location: Dock72, 3rd Floor Photo Gallery
In truth? curated by Darling Green
Exhibiting Artists:
Aidan McLellan
Liv Dawson
Cléo Sương Mai Richez
Please see LINKS in bio for more information and to attend! 🔗
@prattinstitute @soartpratt @darling_green_studio @aidtkm @ld.pdf @richezcleo
THE SPRING FILM CANISTER HUNT IS ON 🐣📸🌻🎞️🍫🍬
Hidden throughout the department are film canisters filled with candy and other prizes!
There are also some Pratt Photo stickers at the Tech Office ✨
Happy hunting and happy spring from the Photo Techs! 🙂
(**Limit one “special” prize per student**)
Opening NOW ✨ the next (and penultimate!) round of BFA Thesis Exhibitions, featuring:
False Front by Alex Wang
Sugarcoat by Perrin Rienert
Panoptics by Victoria Chen
Bonding/Bondage by Yuhan (Nana) Chen
🕔 Opening Reception: today, 5–8PM
🗓️ Tuesday - Friday from 11AM - 5PM.
📍 Pratt Photography Gallery, LL ARC
We hope to see you there!
Congratulations Alex, Perrin, Victoria, and Nana!
@prattinstitute @soartpratt @mingtao_wang @perrinrienert @veek.toria @nanaflaws_
LAST CHANCE ✨ to catch this week’s round of Senior Thesis Exhibitions, featuring:
I Saw You Caught Between by Ava Schlesman
Post No Bills by Megan Proctor
Where the Light Was Meant to Be by Jehan Rana
Echoes, Luminance by John Cushman
🕚 Open until 5PM, today
📍Pratt Photography Gallery, LL ARC
@prattinstitute @soartpratt @avaschlesman @mproctorphotography @jehan.ranaa @johncushman_
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.
