With the busy Graduation Show period fast approaching, we are looking back at last year’s exhibition that featured over 220 wonderful art and design projects.
Save the Date 2-7 July
Sign Up!Bachelor Photography presented diverse voices, all bringing their unique perspective to art the of image-making. Students of the four-year programme, which also has a part-time option, explored themes including identity, human nature, memory, and artificial intelligence — interrogating photography’s role as both revealer and concealer of truth.
Recording, reordering, reinterpreting
Images tell a story and build narratives. Individual and collective memories can be recorded, re-ordered, and reinterpreted, depending on who makes the images, or whose hands the archive falls into.
Interesting Things by Salome Erni
One of the graduating BA Photography students who explored this theme was Salome Erni, whose project Interesting Things took its name from a collection of photographic negatives produced by Dutch photographer Frank Scholten during his travels in the 1920s. This archive, now housed in the Special Collections of Leiden University Libraries offers a rare glimpse into Palestinian life pre-Nakba, yet it is mediated through the colonial gaze. Through a video essay, Erni inverts the negatives, introducing new ways of looking and highlighting the politics of the gaze.
Sléttan, Yzta Annesið (The Farthest North) by Jón Helgi Pálmason
In his project Sléttan, Yzta Annesið (The Farthest North), Jón Helgi Pálmason used ancient folklore as the starting point from which to learn about the landscape of his heritage today. Through photography, archival material, and found objects he examines how land shapes identity, asking — what, then, does it mean if this landscape is quickly changing?
Ethical Personalism by Krystyna Gorayska
Krystyna Gorayska layered historical and cultural imagery in her project Ethical Personalism, exploring the moralistic framing used by both Catholicism and Soviet propaganda. In examining how these seemingly opposing symbologies mirrored each other, Gorayska ponders questions on how identity — both collective and individual — can be shaped.
Feeling inspired?
Want to apply for Bachelor Photography (full-time or part-time) or one of our other study paths? Our bachelor's and master's programmes are a haven for all forms of creativity and research practices.
And, if you can see yourself becoming one of our students, then you're in luck: applications for the next academic year are still open, until May 1.
