Your Welcome Guide

We're delighted to have you join us at Arts University Bournemouth, and hope that your time here will be rewarding, challenging, creative and enjoyable.

Welcome to BA (Hons) Photography

This welcome pack is designed to give you an idea of what to expect during the first weeks of your course. Please take the time to read it carefully and take particular note of the pre-course preparation. We hope that you'll enjoy a happy and productive time with us, and we look forward to meeting you in October.

A message from your Course Leader

On behalf of the course team, I would like to warmly welcome you to the BA (Hons) Photography course at AUB. We look forward to meeting you soon.

The course nurtures the individual, encouraging experimentation and risk taking – creative practice free from constraint. You'll be joining a creative community with supportive lecturers, technicians, professional resources, state of the art equipment and a first-class library to help sustain your learning.

In preparation for the course, it'll be worthwhile for you to begin to think what it is about life and photography that really interests and excites you.

- Simon Cunningham, Course Leader

Before you join us

For the summer project we would like you to create a self-portrait. Please challenge yourself, have fun, be experimental, be creative and try to stay away from the obvious or predictable!

How to submit your summer project

Please save your image as a digital file and be prepared to share your Summer Project during the first week by way of a light-hearted introduction of yourself to your peers and the course team.

The course is visually led but we place importance on research and the contextualisation of your individual practice. Research skills will be taught to you in the first term, but before you arrive and in preparation for the course, it would be useful for you to have read the following books:

Bate, David (2016). Photography (The Key Concepts) (Bloomsbury).
Campany, David (2003) Art and Photography (Phaidon).
Cotton, Charlotte (2014). The Photograph as Contemporary Art (Thames & Hudson).
Edwards, Steve (2006). Photography: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press).
Fulford, Jason (2014). The Photographer’s Playbook (Aperture).
Fox, Anna and Caruana, Natasha (2012). Basic Creative Photography 03 Behind the Image (Bloomsbury).
Kessels, Erik (2016). Failed It! (Phaidon).

The AUB Library is extremely well resourced and includes all key texts that you will need. The Course Handbook, which you will be given includes a comprehensive reading list.

Reading the magazines below should become a regular routine to maintain awareness and currency in relation to contemporary photographic practice: