Photography BA(Hons)

International requirements and visas

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

Visas and immigration advice

Portfolio advice 

Before we make you an offer for a place on this course, we will ask to see a portfolio of your work. Sharing your work enables us to see your potential and to understand your approach and motivations.

After you apply we will be in touch asking you to share the link to your online portfolio. You'll be asked to upload the link to Student View.

• 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

• Based in a vibrant school of art and media, you will be joining a dynamic community in central Brighton, an artistic and progressive city.

• Explore a range of photographic methods and technologies, including traditional analogue processes and digital technology.

• Highly experienced photographers and artists make up the staff teaching team.

• A team of helpful technicians are on hand to guide and support you in the studios, processing areas and darkrooms.

• Option modules throughout your course enable you to combine practice and theory, and tailor the degree to your specific career and creative ambitions.

• Explore the theory of photography, learning about its history and critically considering all aspects of the practice, from composition to post-production to curation.

• Excellent kit room with a wide selection of cameras.

• Industry-standard facilities where you will use sophisticated lighting and camera equipment.

• Visiting artists, writers, photographers, gallerists and media professionals share their experience, giving a window into the creative and business aspects of the media industries.

• Exchange opportunities with Nagoya University of the Arts in Japan.

• Opportunities to exhibit throughout the course, culminating with the major graduate show in the final year.

Follow Photography BA(Hons) on Instagram.

Year 1

In the first year, there are four themed practice modules, each lasting six or seven weeks, and two historical and critical studies modules.

Modules

• Practice 1: Photography and Identity

  In this module you will consider the photographic portrait in the widest possible sense through making a body of work. The subject matter and approach can consider social, personal, gender, ethnicity, generational or family relations. Work may highlight importance of location – workplace or neighbourhood – on identity. Your final work should demonstrate aesthetic consideration, conceptual coherence, research through work in progress, technical realisation in DSLR camera, studio and location lighting; Lightroom, Photoshop, digital printing and portfolio presentation.

• Practice 2: Photography and Place

  In this module you will explore the theme of place through making a body of photographs using analogue processes. Subject matter and approach can consider relationships between nature and culture, the human and non-human, through picturing environments ranging from cities to wild and remote places. The body of photographs should demonstrate aesthetic consideration, thematic coherence, research, technical realisation in camera and darkroom processes, printing and display presentation to reimagine a sense of place.

• Practice 3: The Real and the Imagined

  In this module, you'll be encouraged to adopt a critical approach to the photograph considered as reality and/or imagination through making a body of photographic work. Possible approaches include cultural, historical, political and social issues including autobiographically led narratives. You'll also be introduced to colour darkroom printing, scanning, and digital postproduction.

• Practice 4: Stillness and Time

  In this module you'll consider the still photograph in relation to time and time-based media through making a body of work. Approaches to the work can involve a range of possibilities – still life and theatrical scenarios that form imaginary narratives, to durational work that includes audio components. By the end of the module your final work should demonstrate aesthetic consideration, a coherent concept, research through work in progress, and technical skills that are appropriate to the presentation of your work.

• Perspectives on Photography 1: Origins and Histories

  This module will provide you with an historical overview and analysis of the origins of photography. You will explore how and why history enables meaningful engagement in contemporary debates about photographic practices. You will develop your ability to conduct research – to acquire knowledge through the university’s learning resources, including libraries, My Studies, the internet, public collections, museums and galleries. Your ability to discuss photographs and related ideas in seminars, to analyse photographs, interpret research, and reference sources is developed through this module.

• Perspectives on Photography: Photographic Documents and Photographic Fictions

  Focusing in detail on some areas broadly introduced in the Origins and Histories module, this module provides an analysis of major cultural and critical developments related to photographs regarded as documents and as fictions. You will further develop your ability to conduct simple research, and acquire knowledge through the university’s learning resources, including libraries, My Studies, the internet, public collections, museums and galleries. You'll develop your skills in   interpreting research, towards seminar discussion and presentation, and correctly referencing sources.

Students generally work in groups of ten to twelve with a tutor or tutors in each module. The group convenes weekly to review and discuss progress and share feedback. Over the module, students develop a body of work for review in a formal setting. In this final session, students learn to make a formal presentation of work to the group, help critique other students' work, and receive feedback from peers and tutors.

Practice modules are underpinned by a series of introductory technical demonstrations and workshops, by study support sessions, and by occasional lectures by staff and visiting lecturers. One day of the week is dedicated to historical and critical studies that take the form of a series of lectures, followed by a group seminar and library study time. During the week students are expected to work independently on preparation for seminars and on the practice projects for the modules, making full use of the resources that include processing areas, dark rooms, computer suites and photography studios.

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.

Year 2

In year 2, students choose the projects for practice modules from a range of possibilities informed by staff research interests. Themes vary from year to year. Past project themes have included Archives, Journeys, Traces, Unlikely Spaces. In the second year, students are also encouraged to experiment with other media such as moving image and sound, and they organise an exhibition within and outside of the university. At the end of the year, an independent project that prepares you for the self-directed rigours of the third year is undertaken, in realistic, professional working conditions. Again, lectures and seminars take place one day a week introducing key concepts and debates in contemporary practice.

Modules

• The Global Challenge Project
• Photographic Investigations
• Concepts and Theories in Contemporary Photography
• Research and Resolutions
• Research Themes, Methodologies and Research Proposal

Assessment years 1 and 2

Each practice module is assessed through a combination of a portfolio of work and a development file. This continues in the early stages of the third year with the minor project.

Students on the photography degree are given detailed written feedback at the end of each module and a short feedback tutorial. Through this process, students deepen an understanding of the criteria of assessment and develop skills in critically evaluating their own work and that of others. For historical and critical studies, essays are written for assessment and feedback tutorials are held to explain the assessment result for all essays.

Hear from student Ben Stezaker who discusses how he came to study photography at university.

Final year

In the third year, students consolidate their own personal work.

Modules

• Photography Extended Essay OR Photography Dissertation
• Independent Practice 1
• Independent Practice 2  
• Professional Practice

Meet the team

Holly Birtles, course leader

Holly is a photographic artist and educator. Her practice incorporates performance, prop production and digital and analogue techniques which is informed by collaborations with writers and musicians. In her work she links performance to place and her work is concerned with sensorial discrepancies between the suggested experience and the flat surface of the image. Within her work, props and performances often incorporate operatic song, spoken word and tactile drawings. Read Holly's full profile.

Rachel K Gillies

Rachel is an artist, educator and writer. Her practice encompasses both visual and literary outputs and looks at contemporary photography in relation to technology and aesthetics. She previously held positions as Senior Lecturer in Photography and Electronic Arts at Dunedin School of Art, New Zealand. Read Rachel's full profile.

Fergus Heron

Fergus 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. His work as a photographer involves picturing aspects of the British landscape as strangely familiar places of different natures and histories. Read Fergus's full profile.

Xavier Ribas

Xavier's work explores notions of practice and experience of space, the relationship between centre and periphery, the built and the unbuilt environment, and the contemporary fragmentation of landscape. Read Xavier's full profile.

Martin Seeds

Martin is a trustee of Brighton Photo Fringe and co-founder of the artist-led project space, Niagara Falls Projects. He was nominated for the 2020 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize and has was awarded the Danny Wilson Memorial Award 2018 – Professionals choice for the best solo exhibition at Brighton Photo Fringe. Read Martin's full profile.

Daniel Campbell Blight

Daniel works on various forms of the essay, fiction and poetry, and has written for magazines and journals including 1000 Words, Aperture, Foam, frieze, the Guardian, Philosophy of Photography, Photoworks, Vogue Italia. His book, The Image of Whiteness: Contemporary Photography and Racialization, was published in 2019. Read Daniel's full profile.

Åsa Johannesson

Asa's practice explores the relationship between queer identity, representation, and materiality. It develops from a photographic portrait practice that explores the notion of gender as nonconforming. It has through experimentations using a large format camera most recently generated the body of work The Queering of Photography. Read Asa's full profile.

Other staff who teach on the course include:

• Julia Winckler
• Stephen Bull
• Zoe Childerley

Holly Birtles

Facilities

The following resources are exclusively for our photography BA and MA 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
• 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.

Extra support for teaching and learning is provided through Student Services.

A tour of our Edward Street building where you'll see the foyer, atrium with computer facilities, gallery area, shared workspaces, photographic studios and photography workshop.

Summer shows 2024

Course fees

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

• Brighton Boost – cost of living help for our new undergrad students. Find out about how we can help with your study, accommodation or travel costs and more...
• Fees, bursaries, scholarships and government funding info for UK and international undergraduate students
• Student finance and budgeting while studying
• Read our student contract and tuition fee policy (pdf) for more on University of Brighton tuition fees.

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