MFA in Photography for 2011 (that emphasizes technical instruction)

[Kirsten S]

I want an MFA in Photography because I feel my technical skills need improvement and I would like guidance in further exploring media and advanced technologies. I want a school that emphasizes technical instruction rather that only being conceptual. I am looking into UCLA, California Institute of the Arts, California State University Northridge, San Jose State University, RIT, Pratt, SFAI, Rhode Island School of Design, MICA, Yale, Virginia Commonwealth University, Ohio University, Bard College, and Parsons. I was looking into Savannah College of Art and Design and Academy of Art University as well, but I have heard lots of mixed feeling about these two. I know my list seems endless and if anyone has any advice on ANY of these or others I have not mentioned, I would greatly appreciate it!!

[Frank Petronio]

RIT has all the tech you can handle and the weather/location encourage you to study.

Not that an MFA is a good idea for anyone but at least you'd help the local economy for a few years.

[mrkauffman]

Might as well add Mass College of Art and Columbia University to your list, both very well respected photo programs with people working there that are world reknown photographers.

SCAD is a toss up, i would not reccomend it unless you are 100% sure you want to do commercial work and only that.

[Kirk Gittings]

Some of those schools you list are good schools but not at the cutting edge of advanced technologies, so you need to really look into that aspect. For a school to keep up with that takes a huge financial commitment and a couple of those you mentioned can barely keep their doors open.

[Ben Syverson]

Columbia College in Chicago

[Kirk Gittings]

Columbia College is a school I would recommend given your requirements. I say that even though I teach part-time at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a school I truely love. SAIC is very strong in terms of technology, but not from a practical POV.

[frotog]

Technical skills? Advanced technology? Exploring different media? While these aspects you're interested in exist in mfa programs across the country they are only incidental to most programs principle goal - to turn out working artists with a mature artistic vision as honed by regular critiques. I went to Yale to get an mfa and at the time (late '90's) it was considered one of the less conceptually oriented programs out there. What technical skills we might have learned we figured out ourselves. No one was working with digital even though it had been around for some time. There was nothing interdisciplinary about it other than in referring to artists who were not lens-based. Regrettably, most mfa programs these days (and I've visited a few as a roving artist/critic) seem to be intent on readying their students to present their work to gallerists. With the rise of the critic in the consumption of contemporary art this now means familiarizing candidates with the basest platitudes of 20th cent. continental philosophy (read "contemporary issues" a la art forum) so they might better trick out their product for the market that may or may not take them on. Fortunately for me this wasn't yet the case at Yale in the late '90's with a program still very much under the sway of old-school modernists Papageorge and Benson. But even Yale has changed. As of this year Dean Storr was concerned we were losing ground in the field in not preparing students with the conceptual underpinnings from which so much contemporary work is based. As a kind of palliative to this condition he's implemented a one semester "contemporary issues" which will only serve to further perplex would-be artists (most of whom have no background in classical philosophy) with the obscurantist views of the likes of Derrida , Foucault and Lacan. Truly a sad state of affairs especially when most students are more concerned with the politics of galleries than they are with their own work. I don't mean to discourage you but unless you're hell-bent on becoming an art-star or a college professor I'd advise you to take technical courses at a place like RIT or Brooks. Or move to LA or NYC and start assisting a professional.

[Kirk Gittings]

I don't mean to discourage you but unless you're hell-bent on becoming an art-star or a college professor I'd advise you to take technical courses at a place like RIT or Brooks.

While much of what you say is painfully true, it is primarily true for the cutting edge schools that are seriously into playing that game. There are many schools that offer more of a balanced curriculum with good technical courses and art theory/criticism etc. where a student can structure a program that covers both areas well. There are also many good reasons to get an MFA other than wanting to become an art star or a college professor as I did.

[Brian Ellis]

Based on my two years of post-retirement study (at the undergraduate level) at a fine arts college but also being frequently around a lot of the MFA students, seeing their work, taking some of their courses, etc. many MFA programs are the last place to go to learn technical things. The school I attended was by no means one of the great MFA programs but the professors were graduates of those programs. The idea there seemed to almost be that if you learned what f/stops and film speeds were it would interfere with your artistic muse.

I'm certainly not saying the lack of emphasis on technical aspects is true of all MFA programs, just that I think it is of some so you need to be careful about where you end up going.

I'll also add that some of the programs you mention are (or at least used to be) extremely difficult to get into. If you actually have a choice of attending most of the ones you mention you'll be very fortunate.

[Frank Petronio]

If the intent is to learn and grow, then perhaps not getting an MFA would be more productive. A selection of actual practice, book reading, practical workshops, perhaps an internship, or even, believe it or not, a job might provide a better education and preparation for working as an artist.

I mean ~working as an artist~, not teaching.

[IanG]

Not as simple s that Frank. Although I did take that approach years before.

What it doesn't do isn expose you to the opposites.

Ian

[Frank Petronio]

A lot of grad schools don't exactly welcome dissension, one of the complaints you often hear from MFA students is that the profs bend you to conform to their ideals, not yours.

There is a reason that photographers from Yale often have similar photos, as do other schools have a "look".

[patrickjames]

Any education is an investment in yourself even if you don't use it. Years ago when I was a wee tyke, I had a French professor in the process of getting his doctorate. When I asked him why he wanted it he told me "because it can never be taken away." There is something to be said for that. If you get it, you will always have it.

On the practical side, there are a lot of MFAs that are churned out each year, and most of their careers fade faster than an unfixed print.

[Kirk Gittings]

Any education is an investment in yourself even if you don't use it. Years ago when I was a wee tyke, I had a French professor in the process of getting his doctorate. When I asked him why he wanted it he told me "because it can never be taken away." There is something to be said for that. If you get it, you will always have it.

On the practical side, there are a lot of MFAs that are churned out each year, and most of their careers fade faster than an unfixed print.

I have a friend who is a very successful estate lawyer, photo gallery owner, curator, arts promoter, art collector etc. and a decent photographer. He sits on the board of museums and arts organizations. His public life is all about the arts and in particular photography. Before he went to law school he did a BFA and an MFA in photography and then promptly turned around and went to law school. I asked him once if he thought the arts degrees were a waste of time. To the contrary he felt that studying for those degrees had informed and ignited the real passion in his life and neither a penny of the money nor a moment of that time had been wasted.

On the practical side how many people with BAs in history, english etc. go on to do anything remotely related to what they studied?

[Richard M. Coda]

A lot of grad schools don't exactly welcome dissension, one of the complaints you often hear from MFA students is that the profs bend you to conform to their ideals, not yours.

There is a reason that photographers from Yale often have similar photos, as do other schools have a "look".

:D

[tgtaylor]

Edward Weston and Ansel Adams both taught photography at the college level in a program that is considered to be the best photography program in the nation (or world even) at that time. I don't think either of them graduated high school nor do I recall them taking lessons or courses in photography.

No one can "teach" you. The best a teacher can do is to point out a path to knowledge and help you as you travel along that path. You teach yourself and a truism in life is you know best that which you teach yourself.

Thomas

[Jon Shiu]

Interesting. What college did Weston teach at?

Jon

[Frank Petronio]

Weston did indeed go to photo school, although it was more of a trade school than anything like the navel-gazing lesbian madrassahs of today. But let me tell you what i really think....

[tgtaylor]

Yes, Weston did attend the Illinois College of Photography "for a short time" but already was an accomplished photographer by that time - having exhibited several years previously at the Chicago Art Institute. He was a "guest lecturer" at the California School of Fine Art in San Francisco when Ansel Adams founded the fine art photography department there. Now known as the San Francisco Art institute, it awards the Bachelor thru Master of Fine Arts degree and is one of the oldest art schools in the United States.

Thomas

[mcfactor]

I would also add The School of Visual Arts to that list.

[frotog]

A lot of grad schools don't exactly welcome dissension, one of the complaints you often hear from MFA students is that the profs bend you to conform to their ideals, not yours.

There is a reason that photographers from Yale often have similar photos, as do other schools have a "look".

This is the oft-heard critique of MFA's and may indeed have held some weight in the late sixties and early seventies when most candidates, self-conscious of the canon, worked within the relatively narrow confines of what was at that time considered "important" in the history of the medium. Somewhere around here I have an early version of the annual book compiled of selections of the work of the six or seven members of the graduating class. It's shocking to see how closely those photographs, solely in b/w, adhered to the documentary tradition.

This, however, suddenly stopped being the case about fifteen years ago, at the beginning of the boom years in the mid-nineties, when aspiring photographer/artists had a much wider field of play for their art-making. Granted, many photographers who went through the pressure-cooker at Yale in and around the millenium chose to use large-format cameras and color film. And many of the careers that were launched at that time belonged to women (and they weren't always lesbians;)). But that was the late nineties and that was the zeitgeist at that particular time. If a surprising percentage of the leading lights in contemporary contextual/stylistic trends happen to be Yale grads and UCLA grads, it's because those schools attract some of the best talent out there. I think the "look" you refer to is more a product of the mercurial nature of these trends - there is no permanent ideal being preached from on high by any one messianic "prof" no matter how narcissistic he/she might be. If anything, "dissension" is not only the norm but what is most expected/anticipated by professors, critics and (most of all) indeed the students themselves. And, of course, this is what is exciting about grad school and the real reason to go...to be surrounded by already accomplished and undeniably talented artists seriously intent on pushing the limits of their work in an effort to make something new - to leave your comfort zone, to corrupt the proclivities (or your "ideals":D ) of your picture-making practice. Good luck in getting in - the competition gets more and more fierce every year.