In addition to our emphasis in photography as a fine art, our program also offers a strong commercial photography pathway, a feature that makes our undergraduate program unique. Covering a full spectrum of technical, aesthetic, conceptual, and theoretical issues, one of the primary objectives of the Photography program is to enhance the student's ability to conceptualize complex ideas that are expressed visually.

Throughout its history, photography has served as a powerful means of self-expression, a catalyst for cultural change and a medium for social commentary and activism. We encourage students to produce thoughtful artwork that deals with the meaningful and urgent issues of our times. We also recognize the increasing interdisciplinary nature of photography, and encourage interested students to explore and integrate related media including installation, film and video, and electronic media

 

Quick Links

• Undergraduate Major and Minor Forms
• Degree Requirements: BFA Photography

 

Program Learning Outcomes (PLO)

• PLO 1

  • Analyze and research visual and conceptual problems and both apply and explain their use of basic design principles, concepts, tools, techniques, media, materials, formats, and visual languages to solve those problems. We expect our students to bring their expertise in finding visual-verbal solutions to problems as they embark on a lifetime of self- and professional employment in a variety of careers. As students they will demonstrate their development and application of art knowledge in a wide range of studio courses, culminating in a capstone course.

• PLO 2

  • Demonstrate increasing skills in the use of diverse materials, tools, and media, and be able to explain and evaluate success/failure in individual and group critiques. We expect our graduates to be lifelong problem-identifiers and problem solvers, always on the lookout for new and better skills. Prior to graduation, they will demonstrate their making/evaluating skills in studio courses and their skills of self-assessment and explanation in a sequence of interdisciplinary professional courses and in a capstone course.

• PLO 3

  • Demonstrate their commitment to valuing art’s role in offering cultural critique and addressing issues of social responsibility in a global society. As creative professionals, our graduates will, we hope, assume leadership roles in engaging with social and cultural change-as teachers, as critics, as spokespersons for important issues that cannot yet be imagined. As undergraduates, our students will demonstrate their understanding of the values of contemporary art in their visual and written responses to class assignments in studio courses and in the interdisciplinary core and capstone courses (where these qualities will be assessed), in their work on collaborative group projects, in the successful articulation of their ideas in exhibitions and artist statements.

• PLO 4

  • Apply their knowledge of visual history and theory to their creative endeavors and to their professional practice. They will be able to speak and write clearly about art and global culture, using appropriate terminology and demonstrating their understanding of the contemporary art world. They will demonstrate their ability to place their own work within the broader context of historical and contemporary art and ideas. Our graduates will commit to continued personal engagement with intellectual issues in contemporary art and culture. As students, they will demonstrate their understanding of visual history and theory in assignments completed for their art history courses and their understanding of the intellectual context and historical precedents of their own work in assignments completed for their professional core and capstone courses.

• PLO 5

  • Demonstrate their readiness for careers as creative professionals by completing a more sequenced and specialized course of study in sculpture, installation and other three-dimensional art forms. Admission to the BFA requires students to demonstrate their ability to work independently as artists. Students will have successfully developed and presented for review by the Department’s faculty (a) a unified body of work (10 images), (b) n artist statement (of purpose) and then secured (c) support and commitment of two area faculty members willing to serve on that student’s BFA committee. Each BFA candidate then (d) successfully completes the professional BFA seminar and (e) schedules and mounts in one of the Department’s student exhibition galleries a solo exhibition (as the work for ART 199) that meets the approval of the student’s BFA committee. Our BFA graduates will embark on professional careers as practicing artists and creative professionals and/or apply to MFA programs for further instruction and certification for college/university teaching.

 

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Graduate Program – MFA

MFA Art Concentration in Photography

 

Our Photography Graduate Program supports and encourages a wide range of traditional, conceptual and interdisciplinary approaches to lens related imaging. Philosophically, the program is committed to addressing the breadth of contemporary issues and practices while realistically preparing you for a career in the field. The faculty is composed of artists/photographers with national and international careers whose work ranges from conceptual installation and new genres to traditional and commercial. There is no pervasive aesthetic trend at SJSU; the faculty has been carefully selected to offer a wide range of aesthetic and technical possibilities to the students. Our program welcomes and promotes diverse styles and viewpoints. We encourage students to produce thoughtful artwork that deals with meaningful issues, and our faculty is here to help you refine your direction and create your best work.

Teaching Opportunities

During the course of their studies in the program, qualified graduate students may apply for the opportunity to teach at the Teaching Associate level, which provides a generous stipend and tuition waiver. Students are offered considerable freedom between teaching, studio practice, academic classes and outside internships within which to design a program specific to their individual needs.

 

Quick Links

• Application Instructions and Procedures
• Degree Requirements: MFA Photography
• Academic Summary Form [pdf]
• MFA Summary

 

Program Learning Outcomes (PLO)

• PLO1

  • Will be able to analyze and research visual and conceptual problems and both apply and explain their sophisticated use of the elements and principles of art to solve those problems. Our graduates will be artists capable of studio practice and exhibition at the professional level.

• PLO2

  • Will be able to demonstrate increased technical capabilities and skills relevant to their areas of expertise and be able to explain and evaluate success/failure in individual and group critiques. We expect our graduates to be lifelong problem-identifiers and problem-solvers, always on the lookout for new and better skills.  Prior to participation in a final thesis exhibition, MFA candidates will already have demonstrated their skills in portfolio reviews, frequent faculty and peer critiques, evaluations by thesis committee members, and in solo and group exhibitions.

• PLO3

  • Will demonstrate their commitment to valuing art’s role in offering cultural critique and addressing issues of social responsibility in a global society. As creative professionals, our graduates will, we hope, assume leadership roles in engaging with social and cultural change--as teachers, as critics, as spokespersons for important issues which cannot yet be imagined.  As graduate students, our MFA candidates will demonstrate their understanding of the values of contemporary art in their visual and written responses to class assignments in area and interdisciplinary seminars and in the successful articulation of their ideas in exhibitions and artist statements.

• PLO4

  • Will apply their knowledge of visual history and theory to their creative endeavors and to their professional practice. They will be able to speak and write clearly about art and global culture and demonstrate their understanding of the contemporary and global art world. They will demonstrate their ability to place their own work within the broader context of historical and contemporary art and theory.  Our graduates will commit to continued personal engagement with intellectual issues in contemporary art and culture.

• PLO5

  • Will not only be capable of studio practice and exhibition at the professional level but also will have demonstrated the ability to organize and present technical and intellectual information and to lecture/teach on a variety of topics in photography. Those students who seek teaching positions while still in graduate school will be mentored in classroom assistant capacity for two semesters, carefully screened for a teaching pool, trained as teachers, and carefully evaluated when hired as Teaching Associates. We expect our graduates to be experienced and professional teachers.

 

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Facilities

The Photography Program's technical facilities are among the best and largest in the West and include Six Epson printers (4880, 4900, 7880), a Canon large format printer, a large complement of digital support equipment, digital and film based cameras, and four instructional complexes with fifty enlargers, eight commercial lighting studio stations, and facilities for alternative photographic processes. We recognize the future of most photographic practice to be digital, yet we honor and respect the educational value and the potential for self-expression available in traditional darkroom facilities. To that end, we maintain traditional darkrooms and an alternative processes lab, while we continue to upgrade our digital equipment as the technology advances.

 

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Program Coordinator:

Prof. Binh Danh – binh.danh@sjsu.edu

 

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Graduate Contact:

Prof. Rhonda Holberton – rhonda.holberton@sjsu.edu

 

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Faculty & Lecturers

 

Binh Danh

Assistant Professor
Area Coordinator - Photography

Duncan Hall 401C | binh.danh@sjsu.edu

 

Binh Danh is an Assistant Professor of Art at San José State University’s Photography Program. He received an MFA from Stanford and a BFA from San Jose State University and had emerged as an artist of national importance with work that investigates his Vietnamese heritage and our collective memory of war. Danh produces socially engaged work that often involved community outreach and archival research that deals with mortality, memory, history, landscape, justice, evidence, and spirituality.

 

He invented the chlorophyll printing process, in which photographic images of the Vietnam War appear embedded in leaves through the action of photosynthesis. Another body of work, “War Memoranda: Photography, Walt Whitman, and Memorials” grows out of an ongoing eight-year collaboration between Binh Danh and poet Robert Schultz. Currently, a traveling exhibition, War Memoranda examines the question “How do Americans remember war?” The artist and poet have used soldiers’ photographic portraits developed onto the flesh of leaves, historical battlefield landscapes photographed using 19th-century technologies and poems about war to provide intimate reflections on the after-effects of war. Danh’s newer body of work focuses on nineteenth-century photographic processes, applying them in an investigation of battlefield landscapes and contemporary memorials. Recent series of daguerreotypes celebrated the United States National Park system during its anniversary year, commemorated a makeshift soldier memorial for the was in Iraq/Afghanistan called the “Crosses of Lafayette,” and documented humankind attempts to make marks in the land through daguerreotypes of Spiral Jetty and petroglyphs in the Southwest.

 

His work has been presented at museums nationally and internationally and are held in the collections of the National Gallery of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The M.H. de Young Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts – Boston, the San Jose Museum of Art, the Center for Creative Photography, the George Eastman Museum, Pier 24: The Pilara Foundation Collection, Harry Ransom Center, and many others. He was awarded artist-in-residence at Lesley University (Spring semester visiting artist-in-residence), Sun Valley Center for the Arts, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Art Centre in Gymea, Australia, Roanoke College (Copenhaver Scholar-in-Residence), Hollins University (Frances Niederer Artist-in-Residence), Washington and Lee University (The John and Barbara Glynn Family Visiting Professor), Weber State University (Hurst Artist in Residence), Kala Art Institute (Visions from the New California Fellowship), Light Work Artist-in-Residence program, University of Nebraska (Artist Diversity Residency Program), and a residency at the Cite Internationale Des Arts in Paris, France. He received the 2010 Eureka Fellowship from the Fleishhacker Foundation, and in 2012 he was a featured artist at the 18th Biennale of Sydney in Australia. He is represented by Haines Gallery, San Francisco, CA and Lisa Sette Gallery in Phoenix, AZ. He lives and works in San Jose, CA.

 

 

 

 

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