MA Photographic Studies 2013

FOReWoRD The work shown here is a guide to the 2013 graduates of the University of Westminster MA Photographic Studies (MAPS).

The participants in this catalogue and the show that accompanies it have been keen to stress the international and ‘global’ dimension of the group.

Twenty-seven people from seventeen countries is an impressive mix of cultures, social habits and image values. This consciousness of the global is embedded in much of the work too, serving to inspire questions about our modern conditions and the way we ‘see’ things, whether it is urban life, regional practices or the movement between them.

Cinema, television and the internet play their roles in fixing social values, but the new visibilities in the practices here embody the work of investigation, re-thinking and asking different questions. Each to their own, the works here are pensive and give the spectator ‘images of thought’. We are far away from that idea of the ‘global village’ that was once vaunted as a new technological utopia.

David Bate