Source: Graduate Photography Online 2025 - 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.

The mix of work has been enthralling to think through, with the wider submissions offering a broad dive into current photographic practice. Congratulations to all. I particularly enjoy when practitioners take their process into the realms of performance, when multidisciplinary acts and behind the camera interventions reveal the journey to the final frame. Much of the work challenges ideas of linearity, embracing cycles and fleeting transitions between past and present, evoking experiences beyond what can be documented or fully contained in a single image. These artists have found ways to create work that lingers and rewards our time and attention with new insights into image reading. The provocations of this brilliant 2025 cohort are invigorating.

Selected Photographers:

Selector's Comment: These quietly dynamic images speak of universal themes towards thoughts of grief and the fragility of being human. I was struck by the series’ sense of loss and longing for this most cherished place, but also by how Kostamo Deschamps really opens those ideas up. Their use of monochrome allows for more abstract ideas of place and time to emerge. By isolating tiny fragments of memory and expanding them into wider scenes, the work goes beyond documentation, unfolding into an open-ended reflection on personal histories and attachment.

Selector's Comment: The growth of fungus/mycelium between urban cracks offers a striking reconsideration of the balance between human systems and natural processes. The work employs performance, inviting viewers to notice these interventions in everyday spaces. By repositioning the fungus alongside the human form, Lei Yu prompts reflection on power, ecology, and feminist perspectives, connecting the oppressions of land and body. The series encourages a slower, attentive engagement with the world, revealing overlooked networks that sustain life, quietly resisting control, and highlighting the unexpected life forces embedded in the everyday.

Selector's Comment: This series uncovers overlooked wastelands that appear still, but hum with unseen potential. Jobson’s photographs gather discarded matter and neglected spaces, each frame poised on the edge of change. The geometry of boundaries contrasts with the natural scrubland. The images transform peripheral sites into poetic reflections on human impact. Jobson encourages us to notice what is often ignored: the traces we leave behind, the beauty embedded in everyday remnants, and the life that exists even in the margins.

Selector's Comment: 'Yako' presents a carefully edited selection of images that invite extended reflection on ritual, loss, remembrance, and celebration. Confidently lifting the work from the wall, it’s great to see how experimenting with installation creates an intimate viewing environment for ideas to circulate. Beyond illustrating a story of grief, Zahui opens a space for dialogue, using the Ivorian expression as a gesture of compassion and solidarity. Employing strong choreography and a compelling gaze, the photographs speak of how death is ritualised and shaped across different cultures.

Selector's Comment: This work explores the temporal threshold of dusk to invite reflection in a familiar, yet sumptuous way. These images align physical rhythms with natural cycles, suggesting a feminine perspective that is generative and inescapable. By reframing these patterns positively rather than constraining, Barr challenges goal-driven narratives of productivity. Instead, she encourages attention to the beauty of repetition, whether daily, monthly, seasonal. Figures entwined with flowers appear suspended in time, drawing us towards a deeper recognition of our place in nature.

Selector's Comment: Max Southern’s 'Single Photographs' stirs me with a kind of gleeful intrigue. He investigates the status of the photographic image as a discrete, self-contained artwork. Each picture asserts its autonomy, encouraging the viewer to engage with it as one might a painting: complete within its frame. I almost see this as a performance in itself. In the quiet provocative act of not working in a series, he creates an intentional friction for photographic audiences largely accustomed to constructing meaning across multiple images.