Thoughts and New Work From My First Year in the ICP-Bard MFA Program

As many of you know, I enrolled in graduate school to pursue my MFA in photography. After speaking extensively with class of 2010 alumnae Holly Bynoe (publisher of ARC magazine), I chose ICP-Bard because of what I describe as the program’s liberal arts philosophy towards studying photography, which reminded me of my academic experience as an undergrad.


For me, this past year has been a joyful challenge. It was a huge shock to go from work mode (meeting with executives, graphing web analytics and generating spreadsheets) to art mode (doing assignments like presenting who I considered to be the “worst” artist and using psychoanalysis to talk about contemporary art). 


It was even harder to embrace the new role of artist/photographer while being a mother. I quickly learned that I had to prioritize art making which meant working after my son was asleep, often between the hours of 8pm to 4am.


I entered this MFA program with very strict rules for thinking about how my work should be created and presented. Yet each course taught me to loosen up: whether it was listening to Nayland Blake’s command of asserting the values behind our art, seeing work that pushed the camera’s boundaries in David Deitcher’s Photoconceptualism lectures or heeding Moyra Davey’s command to write about our work...

Photographs of Tokyo at 2012 New York Photo Festival

TOKYO-GA will participate in The New York Photo Festival 2012, May 16-20th. In an act of global solidarity, TOKYO-GA will present for the first time a selection of Tokyo photographs by Japanese, American, and European photographers.

Copyright Haruna Kawanishi 

TOKYO-GA created an extensive photographic project: describing Tokyo Scapes by 100 Photographers. Tokyo reacts quickly to changes of the times; as the largest and most recognizable city in Japan it has become a site of unity. The idea for TOKYO-GA originated as an internal response to the devastating natural disasters that occurred in Japan in 2011. These events brought an awareness of the global connectedness of not just Japanese people, but all of humanity.