As a part of our BA (Hons) Photography and Creative Industries course we debuted with an exhibition. For us, Jasper Mafuta and Yana Kozar (Year 2 students), this was a great first experience of presenting our photography to the public with the support from a leading gallery in London.

The brief: Photo Portrait Now

'Photo Portrait Now' was the live brief and collaboration with National Portrait Gallery. Our task was to work closely with communities often misrepresented in the media, as well as with the gallery itself.

Project focus

“For my project, I created a series of portraits celebrating young black figures through beauty and fashion-led imagery rather than documentary or historical narratives. I was influenced by artists like Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and Cecil Beaton. The series leans into colour and imagination, placing black youth in images that feel celebratory and expansive.” – Jasper Mafuta

Developing our ideas

The development of the project lasted for four months. This process had its challenges, but our unit leader Adrian Wood was always here for us to motivate and support. Throughout, we were able to attend a wide range of workshops to help us discover extraordinary approaches to contemporary portraiture. For instance, a large format 5x4 analogue workshop was followed by a series of lectures on how generative AI is affecting the world of photography.

Community engagement

“I chose to work closely with young representatives from the Ukrainian Scout community and have done various photoshoots with them over the project development. Responding to our frequent conversations about ethics in photography and social engagement projects, I have also organised a film photography workshop for Girl Scouts.” — Yana Kozar.

Exhibiting our work

As we were finalising the main part of the project in January, we had exciting news, that we were given the Upper Gallery space at LCC to showcase our work.

We wanted to exhibit our projects with a fresh approach, and had an amazing day with a guest mentor, photography curator Kymara Akinpelumi, who came to us from Manchester. She gave us a lecture about the theory of curating, showcased her works, and sat individually with each of us to help and inspire.

“For me personally this curation lecture was one of the crucial moments of the project development, I did struggle with it a little bit, because I had never exhibited my work before. Kymara really took time to understand me and the purpose of my project and together we came up with a fantastic idea for installation.” - Yana Kozar

The installing day was also one of a kind. Instead of our normal class, we teamed up at the Upper Gallery, with our mentors Adrian Wood (senior lecturer) and D.Wiafe (course leader), along with the exhibition team, and did our best to connect all the bodies of work into one group exhibition.

Reflecting on the project

“What made this assignment so useful to me was the industry insight and chance to learn more about curation.  We were responding to a genuine industry brief and had the chance to discuss our final images with professionals directly from the gallery. This gave real insight into how my work could be considered beyond university. I also gained hands-on experience with curation, thinking about scale, placement and how my work would sit alongside my peers. Seeing my images realised at that scale, in a shared space, was an amazing feeling.” – Jasper Mafuta.

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• See more from our Media School
• Discover BA (Hons) Photography and Creative Industries
• Follow Yana Kozar
• Follow Jasper Mafuta
• Learn more about Photo Portrait Now