©Chris Fraser, Artist in Residence

Each installment of In Focus: The MFA Review highlights a different MFA program for photographic artists, offering readers a concise overview of its identity, curriculum, faculty, student experience, financial support, and post-graduation outcomes. It also serves as a showcase of the creative work produced by faculty, students, and alumni. Rather than functioning as rankings or endorsements, these features are intended as practical starting points—tools to help prospective students compare programs, identify what matters most to them, and make more informed decisions about their graduate education. While certain details shared in these articles may change over time, my hope is that these program snapshots offer a clear sense of what each represents in the present moment.

Thank you to Chris Fraser for completing this interview and compiling all the images/resources!

Institution name: Cranbrook Academy of Art

Degree Title: MFA in Photography

Location: Bloomfield Hills, MI

Link to Program Page: https://cranbrookart.edu/programs/photography/

Link to Application Page: https://cranbrookart.edu/admissions/how-to-apply/

Instagram: @cranbrookphoto

©Elan Schwartz, MFA Candidate

Tell us a little about your program. How would you define its scope and purpose?

Cranbrook Academy of Art is the nation’s only standalone graduate school of art, architecture, and design. It’s comprised of ten different programs, each with the autonomy to pursue a radically different educational program. Within that scheme, the scope of the Photography Department is broad, but our purpose is narrow. Artist with a background in photography gather under one roof to grow as individuals. Photography is our shared point of departure but not our destination. We lean on the medium much as a toddler leans on a table – to support ourselves as we learn to walk.

I believe firmly in the artist’s obligation to expand their field. For this reason, I encourage my students to abandon good taste and precedent in pursuit of hard questions. We have a mantra in the department: no art, just inquiry. The artist who enters the studio with a goal in mind too often ends up with a thing that looks, but fails to behave, like art. The artist who enters the studio with a question in mind – and commits to working through the problem – will invariably make actual art.

©Michael Shuai, MFA Candidate

What would you say makes your program special?

I could say a high degree of permissiveness makes the program special. That would be half right. Students are free to pursue any line of inquiry they choose. Given the opportunity to explore broadly, many elect to depart from traditional photography. Some even depart from the medium altogether, though they do so with a photographic attitude.

But what’s really notable about the program is the degree to which we support each other through the hardships caused by permissiveness. The goal of every artist in the department is to grow as an individual, but our collective goal is to help each other through that growth. I have as many curricula as students. That makes my job harder but more rewarding. But I’m not alone in this work. My students do it, as well. Together, we hold each other accountable to our goals.

This extends into critique where we try not to judge work by our personal standards but instead by those of the artist. This requires that we get to know each other to a high degree, ensuring our feedback is tailored to the individual. We’re able to do this because the program is small and because we understand the benefit of our labor. When we attend to others as individuals, they do the same for us. Any energy we put into the process is energy we get back.

©Cherry Wood, MFA Candidate

What specialized facilities are available for student use (i.e. darkroom, lighting studio, print lab)?

Photo students have 24/7 access to an in-house digital facility and private darkrooms. We also have two critique spaces for staging work. But our most valuable physical asset may be our kitchen. Flanked by our individual studios, it sits at the center of the department and serves as both classroom and commons. Formal discussions happen here, though these are of limited value. More important are the many unscripted interactions between students, faculty, and visitors. Without the kitchen, I doubt our community would be as strong.

Students also have access to the Academy’s shared facilities: a media lab with a fabric printer, digital jacquard loom, and professionally equipped lighting studio; and a materials lab with a wood shop and digital production tools.

©Chris Dougnac, MFA Candidate

Is your program strictly photography-focused, or does it encourage/allow interdisciplinary work?

When a student brings performance or object-making or social practice into the studio, they participate in a long history of photographic hybridity. When William Henry Fox Talbot finally put light sensitive paper in a camera obscura, he was braiding strands of knowledge developed over two millennia by philosophers and scientists. The oldest surviving account of camera phenomena is attributed to the Chinese philosopher Mozi and dates back to the 4th century BCE. In it he makes no claim to innovation, taking it for granted that his reader will be familiar with image projection. Johann Heinrich Schulze, the first person to make an image using silver nitrate, performed his experiments in the early 18th century. In this, he relied on an alchemical tradition dating back centuries earlier. Not only is the notion of photographic purity a fiction, it’s an impediment to the survival of a rapidly changing medium. We would do well to let the kids play, and marvel while they clumsily usher in the future.

©Michael Hubbard, MFA Candidate

Do you specialize in a particular area (i.e. documentary, experimental, environmental work)? And once in the program, is a student able to shift their focus if their creative interests change?

I think about the department as an incubator for photographic futures. To specialize would be anathema to our mission. I tell my students if they come out of the program looking like anybody else they’re not doing their job. The thing that makes a person strangest in this life may well be the only thing of value they have to offer. So when a student ends up repeating the efforts of another photographer, filmmaker, or artist, they’ve declared themself less artist than art fan.

©Benita Nnachortam, Alum

How structured is the curriculum? Are there required courses, or is it more self-directed?

Cranbrook is an outlier in higher education. We don’t have classes and we don’t give grades. Since 1932, this has been a place for the self-directed artist to pursue questions of their own making. But a lack of classes does not mean a lack of structure. As a department, Photography meets two days a week: once for seminar and again for critique. I cap each meeting at four hours. Though a traditional academic by training, I’ve come to believe that Cranbrook’s loose structure is its greatest asset. Not only does it enable students to cross departmental boundaries – leaving ample time to attend other critiques, workshops, and lectures – it also forces the individual to actively pursue their education. Overly structured environments make students dependent on the institution. I remember hearing in graduate school that seventy-five percent of all MFAs stop making art within two years of graduation. Once the structure of school is gone, discipline goes with it. I’m proud to say that the vast majority of Cranbrook graduates continue making work decades after leaving campus.

©Ryan Ko, Alum

Does the program incorporate video work or emerging media such as AI, VR/AR, or 3D/360 imaging?

We’re a technologically inclusive department. Photography has always been a medium for the masses. It displaced painting as the primary mode of image-making because it was faster, cheaper, and more exacting. With regularity, the field has adopted new modes of production in pursuit of efficiency and delight. AI is the latest innovation within a field that has never stood still. While it departs from photographic tradition in important ways, we ignore or exclude it at our peril.

If photography ever ceases to be common it will lose its vitality. Fix our gaze too firmly on tradition and we risk becoming historical, creating a gap for a newer, more technologically adventurous medium to fill. We can and must remain both historically inclusive and forward-looking. This has long been our strength and we should guard it jealously.

©Martin Venezky, Alum

Does the program offer career development support, such as portfolio reviews, workshop/conference attendance, or networking opportunities?

Every time a person tells me that the most important thing about graduate school is making connections, I know they had an awful experience. For those people lucky enough to find the right program, grad school can be transformational, preparing the newly minted MFA to enter the world with a determined sense of purpose.

At Cranbrook, our core mission is to help students develop independent studio practices. We have them do this within an active and diverse arts environment, ensuring they gain real-world experience with the messy work of building community. Success in the art world is heavily dependent on a person’s ability to navigate these two realms. Everything else is tertiary.

That said, we do provide ample opportunity for further career development. Every year, the department travels to a different city within the greater Midwest, where we meet with artists, curators, and other graduate students, expanding our community. Locally, we lean on relationships with the Detroit Institute of the Arts, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Wasserman Projects, and the graduate program at the University of Michigan. The department is also active within the Society for Photographic Education. I pay for my students to become members and encourage them to join me at both the yearly regional and national conferences. Finally, we offer workshops on campus for students wanting more guidance in art writing, curriculum development, art documentation, and business practices.

©Akea Brionne, Alum

What are key graduation requirements (exhibition, thesis paper, portfolio, etc.)?

Cranbrook requires two things of its graduates: participation in the Graduate Degree Exhibition and the production of a Masters Statement. The GDE is a group exhibition that takes place every April in the Cranbrook Art Museum. Students work closely with museum curators and preparators in the five months leading up to the opening, gaining hands-on experience working with an institution. The Masters Statement is a bound volume that commonly uses pictures and words to account for a student’s experience at Cranbrook. Some students, however, opt instead to deliver a unique artists book or object. These bound works date back to 1948 and are kept in the Academy library.

©Julian Jones, Alum

Who are your current faculty members? What are their areas of creative interest?

I’m the only faculty member in the Photography Department and my title is not professor. From the beginning, faculty at Cranbrook have been called Artists-in-Residence. We’re working artists who live on campus. This shift in title enables me to think anew about how education might be delivered. My job is not to teach but to mentor. I do this through the individualized attention I give each student., through how I structure departmental programming, and, importantly, through the example of my studio practice.

My personal interest is in camera making. I used to go out into the world, camera around my neck, and photograph. I eventually began modifying cameras and building new ones out of cardboard and wood. Slowly, I realized my interest in photography rested in its potential for altering vision. Unfortunately, everything meaningful about my early experiments failed to show up in the photographs. So in graduate school, I started making room-sized cameras that enabled others to share in my studio experiences. For example, I created a piece in Bozeman Montana in which I drilled 10,000 small holes into the roof of a warehouse, turning it into a camera obscura in multiple. Images of the sun project through these holes into the space, moving over the course of the day. As summer gives way to fall, the location of these images rises on the wall, enabling viewers to ponder how time can be reinvested in the relationship between place and the observant body.

©Qualeasha Wood, Alum

Are faculty members primarily full-time or adjunct?

In my role as Artist-in-Residence, I’m more than full-time. My home is a two-minute walk from my studio. My studio is down the hall from the studios of my students. We walk the same sidewalks, go to the same openings, and eat many of our meals together. For student and faculty alike, Cranbrook is a totally immersive environment.

How involved are faculty in mentoring students beyond coursework?

Art is a difficult field for people with the ability to divide their personal and professional lives. When I meet with a student, we’re as likely to talk about what’s happening at home as what’s going on in the studio. I really can’t understand where a person’s work has been or where it may be going until I understand who they are – their desires and deficits, joys and fears.

For example, I conduct a writing workshop for first-year students every spring. Rather than working toward the goal of an artist statement, we use writing to unveil our motivations. It’s amazing what happens when you substitute a finished work of art for a handful of quickly written, half-considered reflections. Works of art are slippery, making it hard to pin down what they are doing or what they may be communicating. But words can be terrifyingly direct. As the artist learns to be vulnerable, the community gains increasing access to their motivations. The results of this are twofold. The knowledge we gain about each other helps us in critique. But that really is the least of it. More importantly, I’ve seen students transform over the course of a spring, from insecure makers who deflect hard questions to confident makers at ease with discomfort.

©Ricky Weaver, Alum

How often do guest artists, curators, or critics visit for lectures and/or critiques?

Visiting artists and critics are a regular presence in the department. Sheida Soleimani, an alumna of the department, lectured here in the fall as part of a photography conference co-hosted by Cranbrook. Letha Wilson joined us soon after for a two-week engagement that included a lecture, studio visits, and dinners. She also made work alongside my students and hung out with us in our kitchen. In March, we hosted another alumna of the department, Jetshri Bhadviya, for a week-long engagement that involved workshops, informal studio visits, and a group meal.

I’ve grown weary of a visiting artist system that seeks to extract value. Host an art hero – have them lecture – schedule brief studio visits – share a meal – wave goodbye. The afterglow of these engagements is short-lived and the long-term benefits are negligible. I now prioritize fostering community internally and creating value externally. This requires extended stays, space for the creation of new work, casual interactions, and the general enrichment of campus life. I want my students to understand that our visitors are future colleagues. Likewise, I want our visitors to benefit from Cranbrook’s resources, participating in our tradition of hands-on experimentation and personal growth.

©Jova Lynne, Alum

How many students are admitted each year, and how many are photography focused?

The Photography Department admits up to seven students per year, each with a background in photography. Campus-wide, Cranbrook accepts up to seventy-five students per year, with emphases in Architecture, Ceramics, Fibers, Graphic Design, Industrial Design, Metalsmithing, Painting, Print Media, and Sculpture.

What is the approximate cohort size, and what effect does this have on critiques, collaboration, and networking?

My cohort size is fourteen. That’s large enough to secure a diversity of practices and perspectives but small enough to ensure that no one falls through the cracks. Even so, I am loathe to put fourteen people in one room for critique, where extroverts bloom and introverts shrink. Instead, the department hosts two critiques simultaneously in two different locations. Each artist receives feedback from a focussed group of six critics for an hour. At that point, the groups trade places, providing each artist with two full hours of deep, idiosyncratic critique.

Collaboration is a pillar of the Cranbrook ethos and is embodied campus-wide. My colleagues and I purposefully under-program our departments to encourage boundary crossing. This began in the 1930s when Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen first molded plywood into a chair, setting off a revolution in furniture design. It continues today as students move between departments to discover affinities and speculate about the future. Likewise, the intimate size of Cranbrook ensures that the eager student can make a meaningful connection with any one of the many visiting artists passing through campus every week, regardless of departmental affiliation.

©Clare Gatto and Kara Güt, Alum

What kind of work are current students creating?

My students are a genial lot of misfits and each does something a bit uncouth. Rather than describe individual works, I’ll rattle off a laundry list of the media I see coming out of the department this year. In addition to photography, my students work in collage, design, drawing, fiber, filmmaking, installation, painting, performance, printmaking, sound, social practice, sculpture, and video. This is indicative not just of the culture of permissiveness I mentioned earlier but of a fearlessness about transgressing boundaries in the service of a personal vision.

©Sheida Soleimani, Alum

What is the total cost of the program (and duration), and what funding options are available?

Tuition for the upcoming school year is $53,210. We offer merit based scholarships upon admission to the program, and candidates are automatically considered. Our merit scholarship covers a percentage of tuition, and more than 90% of our admitted students receive some level of scholarship support.

We also offer up to 10 full-tuition fellowships each year. These are highly competitive and cover 100% of a student’s tuition and mandatory fees for both years of consecutive study. A candidate can only be offered the fellowship at the time of admission to the academy.

For students eligible for Title IV funding, we offer Federal Work-study and Federal Direct Student Loans. Work-study provides part-time on-campus employment and helps to offset day-to-day expenses.

©Shanna Merola, Alum

Are there teaching assistantships, and what percentage of tuition do they cover?

Because of our graduate-only, studio-based model, we do not offer teaching assistantships that can be tied to tuition remission.

Are additional grants/resources available to support student projects?

Each year, enrolled students can apply for a research grant, material awards, travel stipends or residency support for the summer between the first and second year. These are in addition to a student’s merit scholarship.

©Brittany Nelson, Alum

What types of careers to alumni pursue, and how does the program support students after graduation?

Alumni become working artists. Some support themselves through sales, others through commissions and grants. Some work in higher education while others go into arts administration or curation. Most do some combination of these things. All of them hustle.

Being an artist is like owning a small business, only there’s no ready market for what you offer. Every successful artist must create a niche in which to thrive. While no two people do it the same way, every path requires hard work and persistence. At Cranbrook, we prepare students for this by insisting they work only on problems of their choosing while also setting personal standards of success. Without a ready map to guide them, each learns not only to tolerate the discomfort of a life dedicated to inquiry but eventually to find joy in it. That’s why so many Cranbrook students do so well. They’ve had two years to practice a hard thing in a space that encourages failure before going out to a world indifferent to their success.

©Melissa Catanese, Alum

How connected is the alumni network, and do graduates stay involved with the program?

I’ve had a number of alumni tell me – affectionately and only half-jokingly – that Cranbrook is a cult. No matter where you go in the art world, put two Cranbrook graduates in the same room and they will inevitably find each other, hole away, and compare notes. While the Academy confers the same MFA as any other university or art school, the educational experience is radically different and this inspires a type of devotion usually reserved for zealots.

Many of my favorite visiting artists are alumni. They return to campus with a desire to give back. So much of the world, art and otherwise, is transactional. The affection these folks feel for Cranbrook stems from its ability to transform lives. People find themselves here.

I should note that I didn’t go to Cranbrook for graduate school. I’m a lifelong Californian who first set foot in Michigan to interview for this job. But six years in, I can happily say I’ve drunk the Kool-Aid. Cranbrook gives me the freedom to be the educator I’ve always wanted to be. For the right person, this is home.

©Ed Panar, Alum