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Art & Design

Photography & Integrated Media

Master of Fine Arts (MFA), two-year, full-time graduate program

Immerse yourself in a community that is redefining photography.

Photography has become amorphous. As it shifts and evolves in contemporary practice, it escapes a static definition. This is the premise on which we designed our MFA program.

Embrace the medium’s transformation, and view image-making not as a single area of study, but as the integration of photography with traditional studio practices and digital and light-based media. Explore traditional and alternative practices, new technology, and contemporary media. You will have access to our world-class facilities in Cambridge, Massachusetts—a vibrant city centered around academia and the arts—and our renowned faculty of visiting artists and scholars.

Grounded in seminars and critical discourse, professional studies, and concentrated studio practice, the MFA in Photography and Integrated Media curriculum is primarily self-designed and encourages individualization and experimentation.

Explore the historical, cultural, and contemporary nuances of photography and its relationships and integration to traditional media, culture, and critical studies. Through rigorous study, enhance your understanding of photographic art traditions while developing the necessary tools and expertise to continuously flex, refine, and evolve within your personal artistic vision.

A new rotation of all-star visiting contemporary artists, historians, curators, and theorists join our faculty full time each semester. Over the course of your program, you will have five distinct team-taught Graduate Seminars out of a choice of eight, semester-long opportunities, to be guided by trailblazers in visual culture. Tap into our extended professional community to access prestigious internships, teaching fellowships, independent studies, and teaching assistantships. Through experiential learning opportunities, acquire the tools and strategies to forge a lifelong career in the photographic arts.

Graduate Program Inquiry Form

Program Structure

Two-Year, Full-Time, On-Campus Program

60 Credits
Matthew Klos's photo "Back 1"
Student Story

Matthew Klos ’19

Matthew, who experienced sudden paralysis in 2016, uses alternative process photography to explore physical forms and confront struggles in life.

student places gold statue of Blessed Mother on white vaniety
Student Story

Samantha Nieto ’18

Samantha, recently recognized as one of Boston’s top emerging talents, fuses Catholic iconography with pop culture influences from childhood.

“I’m fascinated by unknown territory and pioneering technology, whether that means visualizing, by way of photography, things that seem un-photographable or carving a path for new types of image making.”
Danielle Ezzo ’15, MFA in Photography
Opportunities to Expand Your Career
Take advantage of opportunities to advance your professional ambitions. These can include internships, undergraduate teaching assistantships, mentored independent studies, traditional coursework, and our competitive adjunct faculty teaching fellowships. Recent internships include:
Laurel Nakadate photograph called exorcism in January
Past Visiting Artist
Laurel Nakadate
Nakadate creates provocative works in video, photography, performance and film that challenge conventional perceptions of power, seduction, tenderness and trust. Her early relationship to the fixed viewpoint of the camera, as both artist and subject, insistence on simple production values, and her upending of public and private ritualistic behaviors, anticipated the amateur video aesthetic of YouTube diaries and internet blogs.
photo of adult hand touching a small doll's hand on a child's blanket
Past Visiting Artist
Corrine May Botz
Botz is a Brooklyn-based photographic artist, writer and filmmaker. Her process involves photographing, extensive research, recording oral histories and videos, archiving the material and presenting inter-related exhibitions and books. She often focuses her camera on the residue of daily life that signal expired moments of normalcy before trauma.



Botz’s photographs have been internationally exhibited at such institutions as the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Württembergischer Kunstverein, Germany; De Appel, Amsterdam; and Turner Contemporary, UK. Botz is the author of "Haunted Houses" and "The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death". She is faculty at the International Center of Photography and John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
photo of soldier is printed on dried sea grass
Past Visiting Artist
Binh Danh
Danh, a practicing photographer and a professor, is best known for his images using a photographic technique dubbed chlorophyll printing process. Pioneered by Danh, the process involves embedding images in leaves through the action of photosynthesis. In a review of his work, the New York Times says “his pieces hint at the impermanence of ideas like identity, belonging, family, and history.”

Danh’s work has explored the history of the war in Vietnam, his home country. His work asks the viewer to consider the tragedy of war and being lost. As he produces images of soldiers using his chlorophyll process, he evokes
the “memory of the jungle and the landscape of conflict."

His current work explores photography’s continued relationship to memory and landscape with subject matters ranging from the American Civil War to the National Parks.
pregnant woman lying on bed with dog while her boyfriend reads a magazine called Baby Talk
Faculty & Past Visiting Artist
David Hilliard
Hilliard creates large-scale multi-paneled images that aspire to represent the spaces we inhabit, relationships we create, time, and the objects with which we surround ourselves. His work speaks to the personal as well as the universal experience, with the hope that his photographs illustrate the enduring power of a photograph to be the most powerful expression of himself, both as an artist, and as an individual.
Past Visiting Artists + Scholars
During their tenure, visiting artist and scholars team-teach our graduate studio seminars alongside core faculty, provide feedback during juries, and act as professional mentors. Artists and scholars we have welcomed to campus in the past include some of these and other individuals.
black and white photo of two people standing with another person's thumbs covering their eyes
Photography
Anna Yeroshenko ’15
Meet Anna Yeroshenko, a native of Russia who studied photography and alternative processes in the College of Art and Design's MFA in Photography program. She says everything she knew about the US came from looking at works by her favorite photographers. We caught up with Anna to see how her experience in the MFA program and life in the United States has influenced her work as a professional photographer.
Careers
Jobs You Could Have
Photographers are in high demand across a wide range of industries, from the arts and education, to advertising, marketing, and beyond. Some of the job titles for someone with a photography degree include:

Faculty

Total approximate cost for this master's degree program.
Photography & Integrated Media
Estimated Cost

All graduate students are reviewed for merit scholarships through the admissions process and are awarded at the time of acceptance. Other forms of financial aid are also available. Review all graduate tuition and fees, and what they cover. Tuition and fees are subject to change each year, effective in the Summer term.

Apply Now

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Total approximate cost for this master's degree program. Tuition and fees are for the 2023-2024 academic year.
Use our step-by-step guide to apply for federal and university funding. Scholarships, grants, Work-Study, and loans. It’s all right here.

Next steps to apply

Ready to get started? We're here to make the application process as smooth as possible. Just answer a few quick questions, and get your customized application guide.