Photography
In our Photography research, we're using photographic art practice as an investigative tool. We're exploring photography as a medium, and investigating how photographic practices shape individual subjectivity and modernity.
Photography helps to investigate world issues through art practice. Our research highlights important social and cultural issues and makes them visible in distinct ways, drawing on subjects like art history, cultural theory and philosophy.
Photography is constantly evolving in its engagement, interpretation and distribution. Our research adds to current debates in contemporary photographic practice and asks questions like how photography can be used to propose theoretical considerations, how subjectivity is defined through photography, and how photographic practice proposes new ways of thinking about the world.
Our research focuses on the following topics:
- Photographic art practice
- Photographic theory
- Practice as research
- Psychoanalytic theory
- Vernacular photographic practices
Projects, publications and exhibitions
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Figuring the photographic portrait studio as a psychic apparatus
Dr Jonathan Baggaley, 2015
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Judy Harrison, Photographers and Research (ed. Shirley Read and Mike Simmons), 2016
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From the Series, Communities, Collectives and Collaboration: Our Faces, Our Spaces
Judy Harrison, Photoworks, Brighton, 2014
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Richard Kolker, Source: Thinking Through Photography, 2019
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Richard Kolker, Klompching Gallery, Brooklyn, United States, Fresh 2018: Annual Summer Exhibition, 2018
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Dr Dana Ariel, Home Sweet Home: 1970-2018 The British Home, A Political History, Arles, France, Maison des Peintres, 2018
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לחצות את הגבול עם רימון (To Cross the Border with a Pomegranate)
Dr Dana Ariel, Maya Gallery, 2018
Our research outputs have been published in leading print journals including Photoworks and Source, and in online journals. Our work has also been featured at conferences on photographic research at institutions such as the University of Brighton, and at photo festivals including the Brighton Photo Biennale and Rencontre d'Arles.
Methods and facilities
Our research explores the practices, history and medium of photography in both practical and theoretical ways. Our academic and research staff have decades of professional industry experience – as well as experience with many different photographic techniques and practices – and the methods they employ shape the work we do.
Our photographic facilities include film and digital cameras of all formats, studios, colour and black and white darkrooms, and large format digital printing.
Our members

Dr Jonathan Baggaley
- Job Title Senior Lecturer
- Email Address Jonathan.Baggaley@port.ac.uk
- Department School of Art Design and Performance
- Faculty Faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries
- PhD Supervisor PhD Supervisor

Dr Marius Kwint
- Job Title Reader in Visual Culture
- Email Address Marius.Kwint@port.ac.uk
- Department School of Art Design and Performance
- Faculty Faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries
- PhD Supervisor PhD Supervisor

Dr Dana Ariel
- Job Title Lecturer
- Email Address Dana.Ariel@port.ac.uk
- Department School of Architecture
- Faculty Faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries
- PhD Supervisor PhD Supervisor
Discover our areas of expertise
Photography is one of 6 areas of expertise within our Art and Design: History, Theory and Practice research. Explore the others below.
Interested in a PhD in Art & Design?
Browse our postgraduate research degrees – including PhDs and MPhils – at our Art & Design postgraduate research degrees page.