This page introduces the research of The European Centre for Photographic Research (eCPR), Newport School of Art, Media and Design.
Established in 2000 as the Centre for Photographic Research and designated as European Centre for Photographic Research in 2008, eCPR provides a focus in Wales for high quality research in photography that builds on both its institutional heritage and internationally renowned scholarship. It aims to develop work that addresses both the cultural histories of photography and the contemporary issues and debates informing photographic and film-based art and documentary practices. Based within the School of Art, Media and Design, eCPR builds on an initial pedagogical dynamic between art and documentary that grew out of the teaching of Keith Arnatt and David Hurn in the 1970s. The School has evolved in order to have greater relevance to the shifting relationships and inter-dependencies between art and documentary.
The development of a thriving postgraduate research culture within eCPR has led to the current lively, experimental and contemporary engagement with photography, photography understood not as a fixed discipline but an expanding, multi-faceted field of research, drawing upon a broad range of other academic disciplines, ranging from Art History to Politics. eCPR seeks to be at the forefront of photographic research— research that can be undertaken through practice as well as history and theory. Indeed, with the forthcoming introduction of practice-based Doctorates, eCPR will seek to challenge the existing hierarchies that tend to exist between ‘practice’ and ‘theory’ within the study of photography.
The Centre’s staff, Visiting Fellows and associated research students, cover a range of critical interests in photography and these have been concentrated into four areas and: