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.

It was brilliant to see submissions reflecting an urgent, thoughtful generation of image-makers grappling with history, power, and the politics of representation. Across the projects, I noted a shared desire to interrogate systems – including colonial, medical, social, and digital – and to reimagine how photography can serve as a witness, resist, and facilitate healing. Whether working across explorations of migration, memory, or challenging the authority of institutions – from the archive to the algorithm – these projects collectively demonstrate that photography remains vital as a critical tool for expression, protest, interrogation, and poetry. The projects that struck me most were those willing to experiment with form: blending documentary with fiction, photography with sculpture, collage, or text. I was searching for projects that moved me, not just technically, or aesthetically, but through storytelling or an ability to transform research. Overall, the standard across the submissions was impressive, and I look forward to seeing how these emerging photographers continue to develop their practices.

Selected Photographers:

Selector's Comment: Unlike some documentary projects focussing on marginalised or vulnerable groups, which can feel exploitative, Catherine worked slowly over two years, resisting these extractive tendencies, instead creating images that centre presence and agency. The use of collage heightens this sense of recognition, with an obvious labour of time spent on making the work itself, while giving space for resilience rather than lack. I was struck by how the work dignifies its subjects without sentimentality, making visible these lives that are often ignored. It’s a poignant reminder that photography can hold space for recognition and quiet strength.

Selector's Comment: George’s work feels profoundly urgent against the backdrop of rising nationalism and anti-migrant protests in England. Using collaborative image-making rather than simple documentation, he gives participants agency and resists the rhetoric that dehumanises those housed in tightly controlled hotel environments. The photographs are dignified and tender, offering a safe space in contrast to the restrictions of their daily life. I was especially struck by the way the sitters appear within nature, as if seamlessly part of the landscape. For a moment, political bureaucracy falls away, and they are shown as natural and welcomed by the land itself.

Selector's Comment: I thought this investigation of how the body becomes a site of governance was a fascinating pathway into these ideas through photography. By contrasting collective eye exercises in China with Western methods of self-monitoring, Yiding shows how both 'tradition' and 'science' act as systems of control. The presentation had a dystopian and lab-like feel, almost like an investigative board, which brought real tension to the work as a site of inquiry. I found it to be a rigorous and unsettling project that pushes viewers to reflect on how power operates within the most ordinary of practices.

Selector's Comment: Milo’s interrogation of how colonial myths are constructed and reanimated through photography and public culture feels especially pertinent. Blending performance, generative imaging, and documentary approaches, it makes for an ambitious and layered critique. The 'Generative Studio' is particularly effective in exposing the fragility of historical reporting, showing how easily nationhood and greatness can be manufactured through imagery. What drew me in most was its refusal to treat history as fixed: instead, reopening the archive as a site of speculation and contest.

Selector's Comment: Nasrah’s project is poetic and generous, weaving together diasporic memory, grief, and speculative storytelling. I was particularly drawn to the layered compositions and their sense of otherworldliness, forming a surreal tapestry that is both compelling and beautiful. What impressed me was the way personal experience is transformed into something intimate yet universal, balancing pain with imagination. In doing so, Nasrah turns the camera into a site of care and healing, offering a vision of restoration and possibility that resists borders and reclaims agency.

Selector's Comment: Sharon’s project is a clever and unsettling reflection on surveillance capitalism. Through an impressive and heavy archive of 3,000 photographs and a fractured sculptural self-portrait, she explores the seduction and control of digital systems. I was particularly struck by the metaphor of the hollow head filled with candy – addiction that slowly rots away at our minds. The images feel spontaneous yet are clearly meticulous in their arrangement, and there’s a sinister force beneath the work that evokes the questionable behaviours of data capture. The result being quite visually inventive and chilling in its clarity, exposing the illusion of agency while under digital control.