Graduate Program Coordinator:
Ann Fessler, Professor
phone: 401 454.6128
email: afessler at risd.edu

Department Head:
Eva Sutton, Professor
phone: 401 454.6125
email: esutton at risd.edu

Photography Department
Rhode Island School of Design
Design Center
30 North Main Street
Providence, RI 02903 USA
phone: 401 454.6122
fax: 401 454.6385

>> photo.risd.edu

The Master of Fine Arts in Photography program is an intensive two-year course of study that emphasizes individual research and creative activity. The program defines photography broadly as an ever-changing set of technical, conceptual, and aesthetic conditions that have emerged from the histories of the medium and that exist within broader social, cultural, and aesthetic contexts.

Research and practice are considered to be interdepen-dent activities. The program’s emphasis is on the simultaneous development of visual and critical skills through course work, seminars, independent studio work, and critiques with faculty, outside critics, and peers. Students are encouraged to explore diverse forms of still and time-based photographic image making including video, digital imaging, and multimedia installation, as well as traditional film-based imaging.

The department seeks an interactive balance between its more structured undergraduate program and the indep-endent research orientation of its graduate curriculum. Graduate students may earn credit for undergraduate electives offered by the department which gives them access to broader course offerings in photography. In addition, the department hosts a series of lectures and receptions throughout the year that brings faculty, graduate and undergraduate students together socially.

Graduate students in Photography, Painting, Printmak-ing, Sculpture and Glass are given 24-hour card access to private and semi-private studios in the Fletcher Building, a facility designed to promote interdisciplinary discourse. This building also offers critique spaces and a computer lab for shared use. The adjacent Center for Information Technology (CIT) hosts the street-level Sol Koffler Gallery that exhibits student work from all graduate programs at RISD on a rotating basis.

Beyond each student’s own studio practice, the develop-ment of a broad working knowledge of the fields of contem-porary art practice, theory and criticism is essential. Each semester, the department invites diverse artists and critics for lectures, group critiques and individual studio visits. In addition, there is a wide range of course offerings at both RISD and Brown University that may be taken for graduate seminar credit.

Graduate students in photography may elect to become Teaching Assistants (and earn college work-study income) to faculty members teaching undergraduate courses. In their second year, these TAs may then teach their own non-major classes in the Photography Department where they gain hands-on classroom experience. Students may strengthen and enhance their teaching skills by completing the Certificate Program at Brown University’s Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning during one year of their graduate studies. Students who complete the MFA program are expected to have achieved a high level of mastery over their chosen tools and to be able to conceptualize and create a coherent body of visual work that represents a sustained and sophis-ticated investigation of their ideas. A necessary aspect of this investigation is gaining the ability to write and speak fluently about their work and to frame their practice historically and critically. MFA candidates are required to present work in RISD’s Graduate Thesis Exhibition in May, as well as submit a formal written thesis on their research and work.