Expanded Photography MA

Program Overview

The Expanded Photography MA is a one-year program at the University of Westminster that explores the expanded field of photography, encompassing specialisms like virtual photography, photobooks, and documentary. It empowers students with skills and knowledge in photography and image literacy, focusing on professional development and employability. The program also offers a combination of core and optional modules that address contemporary challenges and specialized professional contexts in the creative industries.

Program Outline

Degree Overview:

The Expanded Photography MA is a one-year program that embraces photography as an expanded field, encompassing specialisms such as virtual photography, photobooks, documentary, art, fashion, editorial, photojournalism, and writing photography. The program aims to motivate students to learn skills, develop knowledge, and expand expertise in the thinking and practice of photography. It empowers students to produce new forms of independent practice and inspires them to work creatively, ethically, and sustainably with expanded photography within the rapidly changing visual image culture and global environment. The course offers a combination of photography and image literacy skills, introducing students to a range of emerging technologies such as 3D Scanning, AI, and CGI. Students gain professional visual skills and knowledge of expansive practices appropriate to diverse contemporary creative fields of photographic image cultures and industries. The Expanded Photography MA puts professional skills at the core of the education. Students develop an independent project with a final exhibition and a professional standard project portfolio or dissertation. The program also includes responding to live briefs, taking part in workshops, and building confidence in research and writing. The Professional Practice module, which runs throughout the course, aims to support students' progression beyond graduation. The module provides mentorship sessions, career seminars, and practical workshops in grants and commissions, alongside other opportunities.

Outline:

The Expanded Photography MA is part of a suite of MA art courses, including the Art and Emerging Technologies MA and the Global Contemporary Art MA. Students tailor their learning through a set of shared optional modules that address contemporary challenges, advanced digital approaches, and specialized professional contexts. Students engage with and evaluate current evolving debates around representation, ethics, and aesthetics and how these are deployed within the arts and creative industries. Seminars, workshops, presentations, and written assignments give students the opportunity to contextualize their own developing practice and to form their own innovative arguments and critical communication skills. Several equivalent options for writing portfolio submissions support students in developing the contextual understanding and communication style most relevant to their individual mode of practice. Students experiment with different materials, technologies, and conceptual approaches and engage with a range of methods and relevant critical contexts. The resulting work should consider theory through practice and be presented in an appropriate manner for a range of diverse audiences, including those in the arts and creative industries. The module encourages ethical approaches that prepare students for onward study and the development of their Master’s Project.

• MA Arts – Master’s Project: This module supports students in developing an independently defined practice-led project, grounded in the contextual understanding of their area of practice, relevant theoretical debates, and creative industries.
The output may take the form of either practical outputs, written dissertation, or a combination of both. The output format is negotiable in terms of the balance of written and practical elements but should be the equivalent of 10,000 words; students work with their tutor to negotiate the balance between text and practice. Workshops, talks, and seminars are offered to introduce students to a range of research and practical skills, such as writing proposals, project management, and dissemination strategies. Through critical reflection, students consider the societal impact, ethical implications, and sustainability of their cultural practices.
• MA Arts - Professional Practice in The Creative Industries: This module offers a framework for students to reflect, develop, and identify their professional interests and future career path.
Students gain a working knowledge of the creative industries landscape while developing a range of relevant professional skills. Through a series of talks, seminars, workshops, and external visits, students are introduced to a variety of working practices in the art and creative industries. Support is offered through tutorials to monitor students' progress and live projects, advise on their professional development needs, and provide direction to relevant resources and networks. Students are also supported by the Careers and Employability service and Westminster Enterprise Network (WeNetwork) to identify opportunities, develop skills, and make informed decisions about their career plans.

Optional Modules:

• Curatorial and Social Practices: This practice-led module is hosted by the Global Contemporary Art MA and focuses on the range of practical and conceptual skills involved in curating for diverse contexts of global contemporary art and creative industries more widely.
The module's emphasis is on new forms of curation that are collaborative, innovative, and disruptive, and where the concept of the ‘exhibition’ becomes a site of negotiation and challenge. Students are introduced to theories and histories about the artistic and social role and function of the curator in arts practice in a shifting landscape.
• Future Archives: This module is hosted by the Art and Emerging Technologies MA and investigates the potential of digital art and design practices and advanced technologies such as 3D scanning and photogrammetry to expand and create the archive of the future.
Students consider archives and source sites as curatorial tools to present and experience collections, employing transmedia approaches and interactive and immersive platforms, and participatory practices to democratize access, engage new audiences, and create dynamic ‘living’ archives. Students work in cross-disciplinary groups and engage with live projects within archives, galleries, and heritage sites.
• Global Arts and Sustainable Futures: This module is hosted by the Global Contemporary Art MA.
It is a research-led module that may take either a text-based or practical approach to address concerns with global issues of climate, social justice, and biodiversity. The module will include experimentation, fieldwork, and/or digital/material investigations. Outputs could take the form of interventions, artworks, performances, or presentations, supported by documentation and research findings. The module enables students to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to create and distribute photographs and related practices in a sustainable and ethical manner while remaining responsive to changing technological and cultural contexts. Seminars and workshops address a range of innovative physical and virtual spaces where current practices are disseminated, including but not limited to digital platforms, social media, galleries, pop-ups, site-specific public interventions, magazines, and photobooks. Students develop exploratory methods for presenting a self-directed body of work in a particular context, demonstrating a self-critical use of technologies, emerging research, and understanding of the relevant creative industries. Through technical exploration and project development, students critically engage with techniques, methods, and concepts used in digital storytelling, interactive and immersive experience design, virtual environment creation and world building, game design, and digital simulation. The module further challenges students to consider cultural and industry-based audiences in the creation of their practical self-defined projects by emphasizing the user experience and participatory elements of interactive technologies.
• Virtual Photography: This module is hosted by the Expanded Photography MA and aims to engage students with expanded notions of photography within virtual spaces, such as gaming, AR, VR, AI, creative coding, and 3D visualization.
Students are introduced to the critical and ethical context of these practices in media and aesthetic theory. Workshops are offered to deepen students' technical understanding of specific virtual photography practices and how they function in the creative industries more broadly. Students can choose to produce either a visual or written project in response to a self-directed research question to analyze the functioning mechanisms of photographs, as well as ethical and legal challenges in the rapidly changing visual culture.

Assessment:

The program includes a variety of assessments, which typically fall into two broad categories:

• Practical: Examples include presentations, podcasts, blogs
• Coursework: Examples include essays, in-class tests, portfolios, dissertation

Teaching:

Teaching methods across all postgraduate courses focus on active student learning through lectures, seminars, workshops, problem-based and blended learning, and where appropriate practical application. Learning typically falls into two broad categories:

• Scheduled hours: Examples include lectures, seminars, practical classes, workshops, supervised time in a studio
• Independent study: Non-scheduled time in which students are expected to study independently.
This may include preparation for scheduled sessions, dissertation/final project research, follow-up work, wider reading or practice, completion of assessment tasks, or revision

Careers:

This course will equip students for opportunities in photographic, cultural, and creative industries. Many graduates from similar courses go on to work as photographers and photographic artists, but equally they pursue a range of careers within the broader photographic, tech, and creative sectors, as designers, creative producers, magazine editors, museum and gallery curators, picture editors and researchers, teachers, and writers. Students have also gone on to study at PhD level and set up their own businesses.

Other:

• The program has a strong emphasis on employability.
The University has developed extensive relationships with industry professionals, including picture editors, gallery directors, and commercial agents, and sought consultations with a variety of experts from the technology industries, to consider career paths available to students and maintain external perspectives on the course.
• The University's Careers and Employability Service has built up a network of over 3,000 employers around the world, helping all students explore and connect with exciting opportunities and careers.
• The University provides an inspiring environment for students to develop their personal, artistic vision.
• The program is taught by a teaching team with a wide range of experience both in industry and academia, as well as working closely with art and photography professionals, role models, and mentors.
• The program offers a year-long Professional Practice module that puts professional development at the core of the journey.
Students are supported by mentors, industry experts, and their tutors to develop a personal career plan according to their own interests and professional goals.
• The program is located at the Harrow Campus, which offers one of the richest portfolios of creative industry research and learning in Europe.
The recent redevelopment of the campus has seen the creation of fluid, informal learning spaces, dedicated project and gallery spaces, and a revamped library.

UK Fees:

£11,500

International Fees:

£15,000

• Alumni Discount See details