Presently The Photography Institute (TPI) is a sponsored organization of the New York Foundation For The Arts and hosted by Columbia University. Established in 1990 at New York University, The National Graduate Seminar (NGS) provides a forum for in-depth examination of critical issues facing artists today as well as a supportive network for emerging artists. Each summer, The Photography Institute convenes the two-week National Graduate Seminar at Columbia University in New York City. All graduate programs of photography are invited to nominate three candidates (male, female, minority). A national three-person jury selects the top twenty that join forty to fifty noted artists and scholars in the sometimes charged and controversial Seminar debates. The exploration is multi-faceted and interdisciplinary. Diversity of perspective is key to the success of the Seminar. Moral and ethical implications of the artist’s role in society are always a part of the discourse. The goal is to encourage articulate, reasoned participation in future decisions that affect us all. Following the Seminar, sessions are transcribed and compiled into a Proceedings Journal and each NGS Fellow undertakes a project that extends the seminar discussions to their home communities. The Journal, which is distributed free to all graduate photography programs and their university libraries, is used as a research resource and contemporary readings text in classrooms throughout the USA. The National Graduate Seminar is the only forum of its kind.

The Photography Institute was awarded a multi-year grant by the Nathan Cummings Foundation in 2001 which made it possible to continue the Institute’s important programming for the 2001 National Graduate Seminar, Performance: A Photographic Perspective, as well as the 2002 program, Projected Images: Visual to Political when the Institute’s major funder, Agfa Corporation cancelled their corporate giving program. That same NCF grant provided critical support while TPI made the difficult transition from being a program of New York University to its own 501(c)3 organization. It allowed the organization to establish a board of directors and launch fundraising efforts in the shadow of 9/11.

Selected Works

Brochure