Photography

This module addresses the transitory nature of photography and encourages you to consider those changes within the context of your own practice.

The module will introduce how society, business and industry view and consume photography.

The module will also explore the role of technology in changing the ways we read and value the photographic image. Key to this discussion is the function of authorship and copyright in a digital landscape of continual creation and distribution.

You will reflect on your practice, considering how these transitions around the subject enable you to reconsider possible ways of working and the role of the audience or client.

This module addresses contemporary perspectives and theoretical texts examining the image, informed by our understanding of identity, ethnicity, culture, and distribution, and equally the ideological positions emerging from these concepts.

The module is taught through a series of interactive lectures and targeted reading, which will be discussed and examined. You will critically engage with contemporary academic research on photography.

‘Beyond the Image’ informs you of the critical frameworks that will inform the next stage of your development as a practitioner. The purpose of the module is not simply to make you aware of these critical frameworks but to actively engage and situate them within your own practice.

This module develops themes explored in the previous two modules and begins the process of applying them to their specific project.

You will identify a theoretical text or way of considering photographic practice within a contemporary context that you wish to explore. You will create a project illustrating and embedding themes of your chosen source material.

The module will develop reflective practice through group discussion and tutorials and culminate in an interim exhibition of the developmental work that will test market and/or public responses to the work.

In this way you will embed the notion of audience as a primary component in the evaluation of your project. 

Disruptive practice is a practice module that works in parallel with Reframing Practice. 

The aim is to create innovative work that disrupts the patterns and methods addressed in the earlier module, so that hybrid forms can be explored and tested alongside more established forms.

The emphasis in this final 60 credit module is on establishing a practice that will form the basis for each student’s development as professional practitioners, on graduation entering whichever sphere of the industry they wish to pursue. 

The methodology and critical focus of the earlier modules will underpin the way in which the work engages with audiences and will signal scope for further, more extensive, or exploratory work in the field.

You may be informing or refining practices that you were already familiar with when entering the programme, or you may find that the module enables you to take a new direction or approach.

Students at this stage may for example decide to move from a commercial practice to a fine art practice, or vice versa.

With this final project, you will reflect on both purpose and impact, considering audience as a principal component towards how your images may be evaluated.