Photography, MFA
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.
Each student mounts a capstone thesis exhibition during their final semester in the program.
| Semester 1 | Credits | |
|---|---|---|
| PHOT-695A | Photography Studio I | 3 |
| PHOT-695B | Photography Studio Context | 3 |
| PHOT-611 | Acts of Recognition: Ethics Race and Representation | 3 |
| Art Criticism, History, Analysis Elective | 3 | |
| Studio Elective | 4 | |
| Credits | 16 | |
| Semester 2 | ||
| PHOT-695C | Photography Studio II | 3 |
| PHOT-699A | Symposium I | 3 |
| Art Criticism, History, Analysis Elective | 3 | |
| Studio Elective | 7 | |
| Credits | 16 | |
| Semester 3 | ||
| PHOT-650A | Thesis I | 3 |
| PHOT-699B | Symposium II | 3 |
| Art Criticism, History, Analysis Elective | 3 | |
| Studio Elective | 4 | |
| All Institute Elective | 3 | |
| Credits | 16 | |
| Semester 4 | ||
| PHOT-650B | Thesis II | 3 |
| PHOT-601 | Thesis Statement I | 3 |
| Studio Elective | 6 | |
| Credits | 12 | |
| Total Credits | 60 | |