Photography

SFAI approaches photography as a visual and conceptual tool, a way to construct narrative, and a means to document the world. 

SFAI is home to the first "fine art" photography program in the country founded by Ansel Adams. The photography curriculum prepares students to bring a critical and historical understanding of the photographic medium in the exploration of conceptual ideas with new image making capabilities. Students work in both digital and analogue formats with the opportunity to experiment with a variety of photographic processes, print surfaces, and equipment while considering issues around representation, scale, installation, site-specific works, and audience.

View Sample Course Descriptions >> 

Past Courses

  • Introduction to Photography and the Darkroom
  • Introduction to Photography as the Digital Medium
  • Advanced Technology for Digital Imaging
  • Expanded Documentary Photography
  • The Photograph as Sculpture
  • Sacred & Profane
  • Alternative Processes
  • Digital bookmaking and Publishing
  • Lighting: Studio & On Location
  • Photography, Sex, and Gender
  • Visual Translations
  • Vernacular Landscape

Virtual Tour of Photography Studios
 

Facilities

Our Photography Department’s resources include a 12 station group darkroom and private darkrooms, all with Saunders and Beseler enlargers to print 35 mm to 4x5 inch negatives; a digital facility, fully color managed with Mac Pro towers, Epson V700& 10000XL, Nikon 9000, and Hasselblad Flextight X5 scanners; a fleet of state of the art Epson inkjet printers to digitally print up to 44” wide; a 30x40 inch UV light exposure unit for historic processes; filtered and temperature controlled water for film processing; a fully equipped lighting studio with a green screen and lighting grid; mat cutting facilities; and a smart classroom with Intel iMac computers, scanners, Epson printers, and flat file storage. Digital and film cameras, including Canon SLRs; 4K video cameras; 35mm, medium format, and 4x5 cameras; lighting gear from strobe to kino lighting kits, are available to students for checkout.

Curriculum

See a sample four-year academic plan.

Summary of Required Credits

Title Units
Liberal Arts Requirements (Examples: Global Social Movements, Un/Natural Ideologies, Concepts of Creativity, Mathematics: A Visual History, Extinction) 33
Studio & General Elective Requirements 72
Art History Requirements 15

Photography Major, Elective + Exhibition Requirements

Title Units
Introduction to Photography 3
Contemporary Tools and Practices 3
Technical Elective 6
Digital Photography I 3
Digital Photography II 3
Conceptual Elective (Ex: Beyond What's Out There: Constructed Photography, Digital Bookmarking and Publishing) 6
History of Photography II 3
Photo Elective (Ex: Sacred and Profane II, Disruption and Order: Bringing Photographs Together) 6
Contemporary Practice 3
Electives in any studio discipline (Ex: Relief Printing, Real Life Comics, Surfaces: Illusion/Abstraction) 24
General Electives 9
Senior Review Seminar 3
BFA Exhibition 0

Art History Requirements

Title Units
Topics and Foundations in Global Visual Culture 3
Topics and Foundations in Contemporary Art 3
History of the Major 3
Art History Elective 3
Art History Elective 3

Faculty

Linda Connor

Reagan Louie

Lindsey White

See the full list of current faculty.

Program Learning Outcomes

  • Students will acquire a comprehensive working knowledge of analog photography, digital photography, and alternative photo-media skills.
  • Students will gain a thorough understanding of photography’s history, theory, and relationship to other media.
  • Students will understand both the aesthetic and instrumental functions of the medium and their relationship to social and cultural issues.
  • Students will develop a cohesive body of work that demonstrates conceptual and aesthetic consistency and a point of view.
  • Students will develop the ability to learn through the critique process and become self-critical.
  • Students will have the ability to articulate how their own work and the work of others functions in related contexts: historical, social, cultural, aesthetic, and psychological.