Source: Graduate Photography Online 2023 - MA/MFA Selections

Each year as part of Graduate Photography Online we ask a number of professionals from the world of photography to review all the MA/MFA work submitted and choose their favourites. We hope this makes an interesting introduction to the project as a whole.

It was inspiring to see such breadth of creativity throughout the work of this year’s graduates. I particularly enjoyed the submissions that explored new ways of looking – proposing unusual viewpoints, embracing new technologies or rethinking traditional photographic techniques. There was also evidence of a renewed impulse towards looking inwards rather than outwards – using photography to reveal and reflect upon deeply personal and intimate aspects of one’s own life. In selecting six series to showcase, I wanted to be stopped in my tracks by original images that I simply hadn’t seen before; for my attention to be held by photographs that rewarded close and prolonged observation; and to discover photographs that made me rethink – in small or significant ways – the way I look at the world. I have no doubt that I will be seeing the work of many of these photographers again as they forge successful careers in the years ahead.

Selected Photographers:

Selector's Comment: There is something reassuringly familiar about James’s photographs of teenage friendships that I can certainly relate to from my own childhood. But the point of difference is the ubiquitous presence of mobile phones – visible in every frame. James’s series reflects upon the ways in which her daughter’s experience of adolescence is mediated by and translated through technology. A handwritten note, presenting a first-hand account of online sexual harassment, deftly undercuts the youthful innocence of the accompanying images.

Selector's Comment: The seductive sorbet colours of Staniforth’s collages belie a more critical exploration of her subject matter. Assembled digitally from a variety of archival and contemporary source material, Staniforth’s juxtapositions conjure implied narratives within each mise-en-scène. I was particularly drawn to the collages populated by women, specifically mid-century house wife types, characters who are caught waiting or looking in scenarios that reference ‘women’s work’ and seem to invoke states of languor, boredom and desire.

Selector's Comment: Carr-Daley’s diaristic project invites the viewer to share an incredibly personal and intimate time in her life, driven by the photographer’s desire to give visibility to the experience of black women in pregnancy and motherhood. There is a tactile quality to Carr-Daley’s images – close ups of stretch marks, alongside creases and folds of skin – a constant invocation of the sense of touch, particularly between mother and child, which makes visible a feeling of togetherness or inseparability.

Selector's Comment: Bell’s atmospheric and evocative images are full of dense texture and tonality, with a dark monochrome palette that conveys psychological intrigue. When displayed sequentially together as an immersive installation in the round, one can imagine the viewer feeling submerged within the watery landscape. Bell acknowledges Virginia Woolf’s death by drowning as inspiration for the series, and the images certainly give tangible form to a feeling of melancholy.

Selector's Comment: The playful humour of Pérez Galán’s images immediately drew my attention, together with the colour palette, in which bright red and pink stand out against the omnipresent greens of the golf course. Looking closer, in all but one of the photographs, Pérez Galán deliberately avoids meeting the gaze of the camera. When she does face the viewer, it is with her arms wrapped protectively around her body. Although the series is premised on celebrating the photographer’s recent golfing success, a sense of vulnerability cuts through the initial irreverence.

Selector's Comment: Verhasselt experiments with new technologies to rethink the genre of portraiture, harnessing Computer Generated Imagery to create a series of performative self-portraits that each comment upon women’s role in the work place. At first glance, the portraits look to be photographs taken in the studio, but closer inspection reveals a catalogue of glitches that show the images to be digital constructions. Verhasselt explores the possibilities and the limitations of portraiture in the age of AI.