Our focus is on encouraging the emergence and development of a meaningful artistic practice through experimentation with a range of creative media and processes. This is underpinned and supported by teaching the necessary skills, techniques, and research methodologies to foster your creative, practical, and contextual development. You will be taught by lecturers who are practising artists themselves with established local, national, and international reputations.

The Photo Media specialisation places emphasis on contemporary fine art photographic and moving image practice, historical contextual learning, current theoretical concerns, and best practice industry expectations. Students will consider the formal and technical aspects of photography and video as well as the theory and debate surrounding lens-based image-making today.

 

Bachelor of Fine Arts: Photo Media Course Outline

The Bachelor of Fine Arts: Photo Media specialism places emphasis on contemporary fine art photographic and moving image practice, historical contextual learning, current theoretical concerns, and best practice industry expectations. Students will consider the formal and technical aspects of photography and video as well as the theory and debate surrounding lens-based image-making today.

The programme is underpinned by the delivery of essential skills, techniques, and methodologies to foster students' creative, practical, and contextual development. Students develop this creative potential while gaining an understanding of professional practice applicable to the photographic and wider communications and media industries. Photo Media students are supported in working on projects that are realised in the form of exhibitions, screenings, and publications.

Students have access seven days a week to modern adaptable studio spaces and specialist digital equipment within which to develop and display their work. They are supported by a range of photographic, lighting, and video equipment and the input of a highly-skilled technician. At the end of each Semester, students stage formal assessment exhibitions within these spaces which provide opportunities to showcase work, resolve ideas, and consider new directions.

Photo Media graduates will be well-positioned to embark on dynamic and creative careers. Alumni f the specialism have established their own commercial and fine arts practices, assisted professional photographers, and worked in galleries, photo labs, and for photographic agencies and producers.

The uniqueness of the Whitecliffe Bachelor of Fine Arts qualification is that it begins by aligning the subjects of Fine Arts and Photo Media (Photography and the Media Arts) together, allowing students to experiment with all forms of working before choosing to focus on a specialism for further study. This means Whitecliffe graduates are better prepared to work across new and traditional fields of contemporary arts practice utilising these highly sought-after transferable skills in an increasingly wide range of industries after graduating.

Whitecliffe's Form Gallery provides an excellent site for students, alumni, faculty, and visiting artists to exhibit. These exhibitions provide insight into professional contemporary practice and help students to connect with the wider arts community.

 

Why choose Photo Media at Whitecliffe?

• Photography and moving image increasingly play a crucial part and ever-changing role in contemporary art practice. Via lens-based arts we engage with fact, fiction, and fantasy - and the place where they intersect. Constant advances in wireless technologies, cameras, data storage, and social networking deliver images from anyone to anywhere, in real-time. Still and moving images are central to the ongoing development of contemporary art practices and exhibitions. Images can seduce the consumer and represent our inner selves. Video is now widely recognised as the literacy of the 21st century and images are embedded into our very culture while retaining their power to harness memory and their storytelling potential.

• The Photo Media pathway at Whitecliffe charts this exciting new territory in the related areas of Photography, Fine Art, and New Media.

• The programme engages with this expanding definition of lens-based media, with an emphasis on Fine Art Photography, Sound and Moving Image, and the Photobook. Students work in their studio spaces to develop a unique photographic practice, supported by electives and workshops that deliver rigorous technical instruction. Entrepreneurship studies and internships ensure students have a clear sense of commercial and professional expectations upon graduating. Contextual studies allow students to position their own ideas within a framework of historical and contemporary art and lens-based theory.

• A committed, enthusiastic team delivers the Photo Media programme. The department draws on experienced lecturers, including established and award-winning practitioners from visual arts, commercial, editorial, and theoretical backgrounds. There is a strong research culture within the department, with lecturers engaged in their own commercial and fine art practices as well as in academic research.

• Whitecliffe faculty have active and productive relationships with both the commercial and fine arts arenas: practicing photographers, artists, and industry specialists regularly take part in artist talks, tutorials, critiques, and workshops.

• Many alumni are working full-time in their own photographic practices, or in creative industry-related fields. Graduates excel in national art awards; exhibit in local and international galleries and have their work published.

• Each year a number of top graduates choose to expand their investigations into further academic research at a postgraduate level.