Photography MA

International requirements and visas

We can help you meet our English language or academic entry requirements.

Visas and immigration advice

Portfolio

Admission to this course involves reviewing your portfolio. After you apply, we will ask you to share a link to an online portfolio of your work. This enables us to see your potential and understand your approach and motivations. 

We will ask you to log on to Student View to share your portfolio link. We will not be able to progress your application to Brighton until you share your portfolio.

• Find out about the specific requirements for your course.

Creating your portfolio
We’ve put together advice and guidance to help you create and share your portfolio and we run regular online portfolio advice sessions where you can get help from our expert team.

Top reasons to choose this course

• We take a distinctive fine art approach to photographic practice and encourage work that crosses technological boundaries and engages with film, video, sound and installation, performance, painting and sculpture.
• You will be practising and thinking about photography in a creative and critical environment, working in a modern building with specialist facilities.
• We will encourage you to engage with the latest developments in photography, fine art and wider media culture, and to constantly challenge the limits of the medium.
• During the course, you will build a professional profile as an independent practitioner, graduating with a body of work ready for exhibition, a publication and a piece of critical writing that will help to position your work.

• We offer guidance on professional development.
• You will be learning with course tutors who are experienced professional photographers and photographic researchers.

Areas of study

Areas of study

Practice-based projects are supported by introductions, tutorials, lectures, seminars and technical workshops. Workshops include demonstrations in the latest digital and traditional analogue processes, involving camera use, lighting, and black-and-white and colour printing. Key professional practice sessions include talks and seminars by photographers, artists, writers and other professionals concerned with commissioning, publishing and exhibiting photography.

Making sure that what you learn with us is relevant, up to date and what employers are looking for is our priority, so courses are reviewed and enhanced on an ongoing basis. When you have applied to us, you’ll be told about any new developments through Student View.

Modules

• Research and Experimentation

  This module will provide the research tools and strategies to encourage creative experimentation. You will research and use the production process to reflect upon key elements of your own creative practice, the photographic language you wish to explore and the position of your practice within relevant photographic fields. You will consult with your peers and support each other’s research and practice.

• Contemporary Debates

  In this module you will produce a 4,000-word essay focusing on the medium of photography. You’ll examine key issues and debates in photography, developments in the medium, critical texts, innovative responses to traditional photographic genres and contemporary issues in visual art. Topics may include stillness, temporality, the index, materiality, repetition, the archive, the accidental, the performative, the tableau and agency.

• Photography Research Project Stage 1

  In this module you will begin a photography research project either by building upon earlier coursework or identifying a new area to explore through independent study and peer learning, supported by group tutorials, individual tutorials, reviews and research guidance tasks. At the end of the module, you will have produced an initial body of work and a digital research dossier.

• Photography Research Project Stage 2

  This module supports the final stage of your practice-based research photographic project. You will build upon and extend your previous coursework to produce a body of work that is original, conceptually coherent and technically accomplished. You will develop the editing and production skills required to refine this work so it can stand as the centrepiece of a portfolio ready for exhibition or publication.

• Photography Books and Publications

  In this module you will produce a photographic publication that will be presented alongside your major project. You will look at issues such as audience, narrative, editing, text, design, binding and materials and consider the changing value, function and significance of the book as a photographic medium in a digital age. An introduction to InDesign and a book binding workshop are offered as part of this module.

• Professional Development for Independent Photographic Practice

  This module will help you develop as a photographic practitioner and explore career options in photography. As well as seminars on different aspects of professional practice such as exhibiting, publishing, networking, curating and writing, there will be a visiting lecturer series. You will develop presentation skills and create a professional portfolio and a website to give you an effective online presence.

• Dissertation

  In a 5,000-word written dissertation you will explore and critically reflect upon a theme or set of ideas related to your photographic practice. You will demonstrate your understanding of key historical and theoretical issues in your field and may also respond to underlying issues connected to politics, identity and the environment. The research undertaken for the dissertation will normally support the development of your photography research project.

Meet the team

Fergus Heron, course leader

Fergus Heron is course leader for our Photography MA. He teaches photography practice and theory across the course. He studied photography at the Royal College of Art and the University for the Creative Arts and holds a Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching Higher Education from Plymouth University.

He is also a Research Student Supervisor and co-leads the Photography in Practice; Photography in Theory Research and Enterprise Group. His work as a photographer involves picturing aspects of the British landscape as strangely familiar places of different natures and histories.

Exhibitions featuring his work include the first major survey of Photography at Tate Britain, How We Are: Photographing Britain and shows at the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World; Pitzhanger Manor House and Gallery; Royal West of England Academy; Museum for Contemporary Art, Roskilde, Denmark and K3 Project Space Zurich, Switzerland.

He is a contributor to A Companion to Photography (Oxford: Blackwell, 2020) and selected The Photographers’ Gallery Photography Culture online platform Photography and Landscape (2018). His photographs and writing are included in the anthology Emerging Landscapes (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014). Edited publications include Visible Economies (Brighton: Photoworks, 2012).

He has curated exhibitions in partnership with artists and galleries and as part of festivals, chaired artist talks and panel discussions and reviewed portfolios for artist development events and organisations across Europe. He served as a trustee of Brighton Photo Fringe 2012–2018. He has presented his practice-based research at numerous university conferences on art, photography, architecture and landscape.

See Fergus's work at fergusheron.com.

Find out about our other teaching staff.

• Xavier Ribas
• Daniel C. Blight
• Åsa Johannesson
• Stephen Bull
• Martin Seeds
• Holly Birtles

Facilities

The following resources are exclusively for MA and BA(Hons) photography students.

• Fully equipped photographic studios
• Dedicated photographic computing facilities
• A digital print bureau
• Traditional colour darkrooms with enlargers that accept a range of negative sizes up to 10 x 8”, capable of enabling the production of exhibition-standard prints
• A traditional black-and-white processing area and darkroom
• A selection of film and digital single lens reflex cameras – and medium-format and large-format film cameras – to supplement your own equipment

The university’s art and design library has a well-stocked photography area and provides access to a wide range of online resources.

Course fees

Scholarships, bursaries and loans

We offer a range of scholarships for postgraduate students. Bursaries and loans may also be available to you.

Find out more about postgraduate fees and funding.

The fees listed here are for the first year of full-time study if you start your course in the academic year 2025–26.

You will pay fees for each year of your course. Some fees may increase each year.

UK undergraduate and some postgraduate fees are regulated by the UK government and increases will not be more than the maximum amount allowed. Course fees that are not regulated may increase each year by up to 5% or RPI (whichever is higher).

If you are studying part-time your fee will usually be calculated based on the number of modules that you take.

Find out more

• Fees, bursaries, scholarships and government funding info for UK and international postgraduate students
• Student finance and budgeting while studying
• About the university’s fees by checking our student contract and tuition fee policy (pdf).

Campus where this course is taught

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