Beginning in the fall of 2011, the School of Visual Arts (SVA) will offer a Master of Professional Studies (MPS) in Fashion Photography, a one-year degree program offering practicing photographers the opportunity to advance their bodies of work under the guidance of photographers, editors, creative directors and digital retouchers working at the forefront of fashion today. The program capitalizes on the resources of two of the world’s fashion capitals, New York and London, having tapped leaders from the creative communities of both to teach in the department. The program will be co-chaired by Stephen Frailey, photographer and chair of the BFA Photography Department at SVA and editor of Dear Dave, magazine, and Jimmy Moffat, co-founder of Art + Commerce.
As Stephen Frailey explains, "Fashion photography is too often thought of as superficial and unworthy of serious consideration, despite its imaginative uses of narrative, its cultural relevance and the profound influence it has had on 'fine art' photography for the past 30 years. Fashion photography is a burgeoning field internationally and we're excited to take the lead in offering a graduate program specifically devoted to the medium."
Fashion photography emerged as a genre in the first decade of the 20th century, following developments in halftone printing techniques which made reproduction in magazines possible. Edward Steichen is credited with the first modern fashion shoot in 1911, following a dare from a French fashion editor of Art et Decoration to promote fashion as a fine art via photography. Steichen's fashion images for Vogue, along with those of Cecil Beaton, Irving Penn and later Richard Avedon helped to both define and revolutionize the modern fashion image.
Frailey and Moffat have assembled leading figures from the fashion industry worldwide as faculty members, visiting artists, guest lecturers and advisers in the program, including: renowned retoucher Pascal Dangin; photographers Nick Knight, Ryan McGinley, Solve Sundsbo and Tim Walker; creative directors Fabien Baron and Glenn O'Brien; and style editors like Alix Browne and Andrew Richardson. They will be joined by noted critics and curators like Cathy Horyn of The New York Times; Vince Aletti of The New Yorker; Carol Squiers of the International Center of Photography and Eva Respini of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, among many others.
Jimmy Moffat remarks, "Fashion photography is a unique cultural matrix. The best practitioners are equally engaged with so-called high and low culture, and our program will do the same. We don't want to just inspire the most original work--we want our students to shape the future of the medium."
Students will explore the narrative, conceptual and cultural subtext of contemporary fashion photography while cultivating the critical and technical skills to produce original, innovative work ready for publication. The curriculum for the intensive 30 credit program includes: Fashion Photography Critique, a rigorous analysis of individual work by peers and faculty advisors; History of Fashion Photography, a historical survey of fashion photography emphasizing contemporary work of the past three decades; Digital Photography for Fashion Photographers, an exploration of the tools and techniques used in creative retouching and digital manipulation; Fashion Photography, Narrative and Cinema, an examination of cinema's influence on storytelling in fashion photography; Video and Fashion Photography, an exploration of the emerging fashion video form; Light, an in-depth look at the many possibilities of an informed use of light within a fashion image; Logistics, Collaboration and Support, which emphasizes the development of creative collaboration and partnerships with fellow students and the professional community. Students will also gather for a weekly Symposium, which includes guest lectures and critiques, museum and gallery trips, visits to designers' studios and couture shows.
