BA (Hons) Photography Graduate Stories

Ryan Harding, BA (Hons) Photography Graduate

"I chose to study at Suffolk as the course was well spoken of by people who had completed it and the work I had seen from previous years was of a very high quality. Studying there, for me, was incredibly enjoyable because I was able to work towards my personal goals. The course combined theoretical practices with technical training and allowed me to create work I wanted to make. Studying an art form as a discipline helped me to grow as a person and a technician.

Since graduating I have worked for many companies and photographers as a freelance Retoucher. I continued to build my technical skill set and as of two years ago I began working full time at a media agency in Essex. I am now a senior photographer/Retoucher and have created still imagery and advertising content for some of the biggest retailers and manufacturers in the world.

The most fulfilling part of my career has just been to take home a wage doing something that I love. Earning money from something that started as a hobby is an achievement that the University helped me to accomplish.

The best advice I was given during my time at University was to never stop creating and learning. We were pushed to use every opportunity to learn more about our craft for future employability. The best advice I would give is to never stop pushing for your place in the world. It's not always who you know; if you have the ability then someone will notice, if you show them."

Student Successes

Melissa Belton

Melissa graduated in 2014, and has been very busy since! She set up the company Photograd, which provides a space to document the journey of photography students from UK based courses.

Melissa says, “Our aim at Photograd is to showcase, support, and encourage both older and more recent graduates, and provide an incentive to continue making work which we feel can become lost post-university.”

“Our very first exhibition, on show at the University of Suffolk, celebrates graduates featured on the Photograd platform during its first year. Venturing away from the online platform on this occasion, this physical exhibition showcases a wide variety of subject matter from over 40 UK photography graduates. In the purpose built space within the University Arts Department the work displayed, with no specified theme, seems to provide a coherent and pleasing collection of photography."

Charlotte Bond

Charlotte Bond has recently received coverage for her latest project 'The Unexplained'. The project considers the fact that 250,000 people of all ages and backgrounds go missing in the U.K. each year. Some return, some change their identity, some are found dead and some are never found. Each missing case is different, however the standardised police procedure for every missing case they receive can be seen as the removal of individual human presence.

Charlotte says, "I created my series in locations I chose at random: I wanted to create spontaneity, replicating the unpredictable nature of when and where people go missing. I removed nearly all of the human features of the models, because I wanted to show the cause as being inhuman like. In which I mean it’s out of character of the social normality for people to just disappear."

"The disappearance of people is random and often unspectacular circumstances is a disturbing subject matter: we don’t wish it on anyone and hope it doesn’t happen to us. I researched various cases of missing people around the country, and each case I looked into were so unique, that I felt this project would fit better in many different locations, with different models for each one."

Viki Simpson

From her degree project 'The Burning Times', Viki was selected for the Eastern Open exhibition, where her work was awarded best in show.

Lauren Carter

Lauren's body of work 'Pictures For a Family Album', was selected by Creative Review as one of the highlights of Free Range 2014, one of Europe's leading graduate showcases.

Alastair Bartlett

Alastair's series 'Here We Are', was selected for the 2014 Renaissance Photography Prize and has been exhibited at the Getty Images Gallery, London.