PHOTOGRAPHY RESEARCH
Explore our work in photography, one of 6 areas of expertise within our Art and Design: History, Theory and Practice research
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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Case study: Judy Harrison
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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How we evolved from lego
Richard Kolker, Source: Thinking Through Photography, 2019
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Bacon's Light Bulb
Richard Kolker, Klompching Gallery, Brooklyn, United States, Fresh 2018: Annual Summer Exhibition, 2018
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Delisted
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
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.
Fashion and textiles
Our fashion and textiles research is addressing important issues around fashion and textile design and its associated industries.
Graphic and communication design
Our research is looking at the history of design, and ethnographic studies in relation to design, design usability, legibility studies, design knowledge, and epistemology.
History and theory of art and design
We're exploring the historical production and consumption of art and design in wider social, cultural, political and economic contexts, with a particular emphasis on curation and exhibitions.
Visual and Material Culture
Concepts such as taste are the product of cultural and social forces – and through our visual and material culture research, we're working to uncover the concepts at work.
Illustration and Art of the Book
We're exploring the historical production and consumption of art and design in wider social, cultural, political and economic contexts, with a particular emphasis on curation and exhibitions.
Interested in a PhD in Art & Design?
Browse our postgraduate research degrees – including PhDs and MPhils – at our Art & Design postgraduate research degrees page.