Overview of Photography & Digital Imaging (MFA)
Maryland Institute College of Art
The graduate photography and digital imaging program acknowledges and reflects the complex and influential role photography plays in shaping our cultural values and conveying shared human experience. The program offers a solid grounding in the critical, historical, and technical skills needed to integrate the new technologies on which the 21st century’s imagination now turns. The program focuses on the evolving issues of representation and the relationship between creativity and techno-culture.
The program centers around a required weekly interdisciplinary seminar that is co-conducted by the director and critic-in-residence. The seminar is meant to raise vital critical issues around the specific areas of practice represented by the students and their work, and to facilitate broader conversations related to theory, history, and the social and political realities facing artists after their formal training. It is seen as an on-going cumulative process supplemented frequently by other visiting artists, critics, and curators.
A total of 60 credits are required for the MFA. Of these, 48 credits are designated for studio and seminar and the remaining 12 credits are for liberal arts credits. A selection of liberal arts seminars, specifically designed for graduate students, is offered each semester. Students may take a limited number of classes at our neighboring institutions of the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County with special permission.
Ideal students are highly self-motivated and eager to participate in an interdisciplinary environment. The program embraces a wide range of practice and encourages students to extend their skills and assimilate the evolving technological resources available to them through the program and facilities.
First-year students are required to take the departmental studio seminar and at least one liberal arts seminar per semester. Additionally, they may choose to take studio credit in areas that they feel they have previous deficiencies or would like to enhance or broaden their skills. Second-year students are required to take one liberal arts seminar, the departmental seminar, and a thesis studio class. A written thesis proposal is required by November 15, outlining the thesis project and its goals. A thesis committee composed of the director, the artist or critic-in-residence, and two additional faculty members then oversee the development/evolution of the project with the student to its completion as an exhibition/presentation at the end of the year. A final MFA candidacy review is also required that includes the thesis committee, the dean of the graduate school, and an invited outside critic, artist, or curator.
Students are provided with individual studios on the 4th floor of the recently renovated Studio Center, a new graduate-themed complex that also houses the Mount Royal School of Art and the Hoffberger School of Painting. The Graduate Photo and Digital Imaging studio area contains an in-house computer lab, and students also have 24-hour access to the Graduate Research Center, a state of the art computer and print facility complete with large format, textile and 3D printers. The department also offers access to tradition, digital and high definition camera and video camera technology in addition to black-and-white and color darkroom facilities (including a 30” color processor).