Basic Facts
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Year of Foundation:
1948
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Year of Receiving CILECT Full Membership:
1988
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Year of Receiving Last State Accreditation:
1948
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Agency (-ies) Who Awarded the State Accreditation:
Government of Ontario, Canada
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Name of Director (Rector, Dean, Head of School):
Prof. Dr. Gerda Cammaer
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Address:
122 Bond Street, Toronto M5B 2K3
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Country:
Canada
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Website:
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Points of Contact
CILECT Contact Person:Director Image Arts Program: Prof. Dr. Gerda CammaerTelephone:+1 416 979 50 00 ext 556870Email:gcammaer@ryerson.ca
Mission & Strategy
The School of Image Arts will deliver comprehensive undergraduate and graduate education in the linked disciplines of film, photography and integrated digital. The curriculum will embrace a balance of theory and practice, fine art and commercial production, while nourishing critical thinking and freedom of expression. Each program will recognize the vital contribution of art, design and visual and critical studies in their respective fields of specialization.
The School of Image Arts (IMA) offers a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Film Studies and a BFA in Photography Studies. Both degrees offer an optional specialization in Integrated Digital. We offer a Master’s of Art (MA) in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management and a Masters of Fine Art (MFA) in Documentary Media.
Degree Areas
Film
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Degree Awarded
Bachelor of Fine Arts
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Training Type
Full-Time
Tuition Fees
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Residents
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Non-Residents
Number of Students
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Applicants (Male/Female/Other)
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Enrolled Students (Male/Female/Other)
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Students Total (Male/Female/Other)
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International Students incl. in Total (Male/Female/Other)
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Graduates incl. in Total (Male/Female/Other)
Admission Requirements
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Portfolio & Interview
No information
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Agreements with Foreign Governments
No information
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High Institution Matriculation
No information
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Recognized Prior Expertise
No information
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Talent Entrance Exams
No information
Language of Studies
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Language of Studies
Student Practical Work Obligations
Graduation Obligations per Student
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Practical Work
No information
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Written Thesis
No information
Budget Parameters
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Total Amount from School`s Budget Allocated to Production Annually
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Average Graduation Practical Work Budget per student
Photography
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Degree Awarded
Bachelor of Fine Arts
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Training Type
Full-Time
Tuition Fees
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Residents
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Non-Residents
Number of Students
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Applicants (Male/Female/Other)
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Enrolled Students (Male/Female/Other)
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Students Total (Male/Female/Other)
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International Students incl. in Total (Male/Female/Other)
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Graduates incl. in Total (Male/Female/Other)
Admission Requirements
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Portfolio & Interview
No information
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Agreements with Foreign Governments
No information
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High Institution Matriculation
No information
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Recognized Prior Expertise
No information
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Talent Entrance Exams
No information
Language of Studies
-
Language of Studies
Student Practical Work Obligations
Graduation Obligations per Student
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Practical Work
No information
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Written Thesis
No information
Budget Parameters
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Total Amount from School`s Budget Allocated to Production Annually
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Average Graduation Practical Work Budget per student
Communication and Culture
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Degree Awarded
Master of Arts (MA) and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) programs
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Training Type
Full-Time
Tuition Fees
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Residents
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Non-Residents
Number of Students
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Applicants (Male/Female/Other)
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Enrolled Students (Male/Female/Other)
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Students Total (Male/Female/Other)
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International Students incl. in Total (Male/Female/Other)
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Graduates incl. in Total (Male/Female/Other)
Admission Requirements
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Portfolio & Interview
No information
-
Agreements with Foreign Governments
No information
-
High Institution Matriculation
No information
-
Recognized Prior Expertise
No information
-
Talent Entrance Exams
No information
Language of Studies
-
Language of Studies
Student Practical Work Obligations
Graduation Obligations per Student
-
Practical Work
No information
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Written Thesis
No information
Budget Parameters
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Total Amount from School`s Budget Allocated to Production Annually
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Average Graduation Practical Work Budget per student
Film and Photography Preservation Collections Management
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Degree Awarded
Master of Arts
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Training Type
Full-Time
Tuition Fees
-
Residents
-
Non-Residents
Number of Students
-
Applicants (Male/Female/Other)
-
Enrolled Students (Male/Female/Other)
-
Students Total (Male/Female/Other)
-
International Students incl. in Total (Male/Female/Other)
-
Graduates incl. in Total (Male/Female/Other)
Admission Requirements
-
Portfolio & Interview
No information
-
Agreements with Foreign Governments
No information
-
High Institution Matriculation
No information
-
Recognized Prior Expertise
No information
-
Talent Entrance Exams
No information
Language of Studies
-
Language of Studies
Student Practical Work Obligations
Graduation Obligations per Student
-
Practical Work
No information
-
Written Thesis
No information
Budget Parameters
-
Total Amount from School`s Budget Allocated to Production Annually
-
Average Graduation Practical Work Budget per student
Documentary Media
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Degree Awarded
Master of Fine Arts
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Training Type
Full-Time
Tuition Fees
-
Residents
-
Non-Residents
Number of Students
-
Applicants (Male/Female/Other)
-
Enrolled Students (Male/Female/Other)
-
Students Total (Male/Female/Other)
-
International Students incl. in Total (Male/Female/Other)
-
Graduates incl. in Total (Male/Female/Other)
Admission Requirements
-
Portfolio & Interview
No information
-
Agreements with Foreign Governments
No information
-
High Institution Matriculation
No information
-
Recognized Prior Expertise
No information
-
Talent Entrance Exams
No information
Language of Studies
-
Language of Studies
Student Practical Work Obligations
Graduation Obligations per Student
-
Practical Work
No information
-
Written Thesis
No information
Budget Parameters
-
Total Amount from School`s Budget Allocated to Production Annually
-
Average Graduation Practical Work Budget per student
Key Teaching Staff
Dr. Jean Bruce
Dr. Jean Bruce is a professor of film, cultural studies and new media in the School of Image Arts where she teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses. She is the Associate Dean, Graduate Education for the Creative School. Her research and publication explore melodrama and affect with specific analyses of sexuality and subjectivity in Canadian cinema; early cinema in Quebec; ethnographic cinema; reality television in Canadian and trans/national contexts; and advertising and consumer culture. Jean is the recipient of internal and tri-council grants, which support this work.
Thohahoken Michael Doxtater
Thohahoken Michael Doxtater, The Creative School’s Indigenous Creative Specialist, a national profile that includes: senior communications specialist; published internationally; produced, directed, and written award-winning documentaries and dramas for academic and public audiences as Head of the NFB’s Studio One, and for PBS and CBC; an executive role with Ontario’s Indigenous Institutes; Canadian government in the field of public communications at RCAP, TRC, Health Canada, Indian Affairs, PMO; conflict resolution and mediation experience at Oka, Tutelo Heights, Red Hill Valley, Eagles Nest, and Caledonia.
Dr. Gerda Cammaer
Dr. Gerda Cammaer is a filmmaker, scholar, and film curator. Her main research interests are experimental and documentary film, eco-media, microcinema and mobile filmmaking with a focus on emerging practices, experimentation with form, and visual storytelling. Her own artistic work entails short experimental and found-footage films, creative documentaries, and mobile cinema. It has been shown nationally and internationally at festivals, academic conferences and in art galleries. Among other publications that draw on her research, she is the co-editor with Dr. Zoe Druick of Cinephemera: Archives, Ephemeral Cinema, and New Screen Histories in Canada (McGill University Press, 2014) and with Dr. Bruno Lessard and Dr. Blake Fitzpatrick of Critical Distance in Documentary Media (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). Together with Pierre Tremblay, she is the co-founder and organizer of Moving-Image-Arts, a thematic International Short film festival that takes place annually in the School of Image Arts. Gerda is also an active member of MINA (Mobile Innovation Network and Association) in Melbourne (Australia) and of CILECT, the International Organization of Cinema, Audiovisual and Media Schools.
Dr. Blake Fitzpatrick
Blake Fitzpatrick is a professor in the School of Image Arts, and the graduate program director of the Media & Design Innovation PhD program in The Creative School. His research interests include critical landscape studies, photography and the nuclear era, and artistic responses to militarism. Fitzpatrick has exhibited his photo-based work in solo and group exhibitions in Canada, the United States and Europe, including the Canadian Embassy in Berlin. Fitzpatrick’s writing and visual work have appeared in numerous journals and in edited collections including The Cultural Work of Photography in Canada (MQUP, 2011), Camera Atomica (AGO, 2015) and Through Post-Atomic Eyes (MQUP, 2020). He is co-editor of Critical Distance in Documentary Media (Palgrave Macmillan 2018) and contributed a chapter on the aerial image in contemporary documentary art for the volume.
Dr. Thierry Gervais
Dr. Thierry Gervais is Associate Professor, Director of the Film and Photography Conservation and Collections Management MA program, and Head of Research of The Image Centre (IMC), Toronto Metropolitan University. He was the editor in chief of Études photographiques from 2007 to 2013 and is the author of numerous articles on photojournalism in peer-reviewed journals and scholarly publications. He was the curator of the exhibition Dispatch: War Photographs in Print, 1854–2008 (IMC, Fall 2014) and the co-curator of the exhibitions Views from Above (Centre Pompidou-Metz, Spring 2013), Léon Gimpel (1873–1948), The Audacious Work of a Photographer (Musée d’Orsay, Paris, Spring 2008), and L’événement: Les images comme acteurs de l’histoire (Jeu de Paume, Paris, Winter 2007). At the IMC, he organized the symposia “The ‘Public Life’ of Photographs” (2013), “Collecting and Curating Photographs: Between Private and Public Collections” (2014), “Photography Historians: A New Generation?” (2015), and “Photography: the Black Box of History” (2018). He edited The “Public” Life of Photographs (2016), the first volume of the academic “RIC Books” series published in partnership with MIT Press. His book (with Gaëlle Morel) The Making of Visual News. A History of Photography in the Press was released by Bloomsbury in October 2017. With Vincent Lavoie, he is working on an edited RIC Books volume dedicated to research in the Black Star collection at the IMC (to be published in 2023). His current research focuses on retouched press photographs.
Dr. David Kemp
Dave Kemp is a visual artist whose practice looks at the intersections and interactions between art, science and technology: particularly at how these fields shape our perception and understanding of the world. His artworks have been exhibited widely at venues such as at the McIntosh Gallery, The Agnes Etherington Art Centre, The Art Gallery of Mississauga, The Ontario Science Centre, and TIFF Lightbox. His works are also included in the permanent collections of the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, The Glenhyrst Gallery, and the Canada Council Art Bank.
Dave obtained his PhD in Art and Visual Culture from Western University and is a graduate from the Master of Visual Studies program at the University of Toronto where he also completed the Collaborative Program in Knowledge Media Design. Prior to this, he earned an Image Arts (photography) BFA from Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly known as Ryerson University) and his BScE in Mechanical Engineering at Queen’s University. He currently works as an Associate Professor in the School of Image Arts at Toronto Metropolitan University.
Katy McCormick
Katy McCormick is a photo-based artist and educator born in Kansas City, Missouri, who is based in Toronto. She received her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. A member of the Atomic Photographers Guild since 2014, her work examines commemorative sites, revealing narratives and social histories embedded in landscapes. Her ongoing project, Rooted among the Ashes: Hibakujumoku / The A-bombed Trees, begun in 2008, comprises a series of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivor trees. An exhibition of these works is on view at the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum in Independence, Missouri, from March – October 2023. The work was also shown at the Quaker Heritage Center, Wilmington College, Ohio, August –December 2022, and was featured in Through Post-atomic Eyes (2020) and Place Matters (2022), both published by McGill-Queens University Press.
McCormick joined TMU in 2006 where she teaches photography, book arts and documentary media in both undergraduate and graduate programs in The School of Image Arts. Prior to joining TMU she was exhibition coordinator and managing editor at Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography, Toronto. She previously held teaching appointments at the University of California, Santa Barbara; at Elmhurst College, Chicago; and at Concordia University, Montréal. She was part of the organizing committee and one of the curators of the third edition of Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal 1993. She has received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, together with many TMU internal grants. In2021, she was awarded the Yeates School of Graduate Studies Outstanding Contribution to Graduate Education Award.
McCormick is associate professor and interim chair of the School of Image Arts. She has served in many leadership roles at TMU including, Ryerson Gallery Director (2006–2011), director of the Documentary Media MFA Program (2013–18), chair of the Departmental Hiring Committee (2021–2022), chair of the Departmental Evaluation Committee (2021–2022), program director, Photography Studies (2022) and director of the Documentary Media Research Centre (2011–2012, 2022-23). In 2009, she worked with graduate students to develop the Documentary Media “DocNow Festival,” now in its 15th year.
Successful Graduates
Che Kothari
Che Kothari (IMA ’05) became known for intimate portrait sessions with many notable musicians and artists. He also created the non-profit organization, Manifesto Community Projects, which does award-winning work with young people, and the annual Manifesto Festival and its sister organizations of Manifesto in Jamaica and NYC.
Bruce McDonald
Bruce McDonald (IMA ’82) attended Ryerson in the 70’s and went on to become one of Canada’s greatest filmmakers known for his irreverent, eclectic style and his love of music and pop culture. After breaking out with his debut feature Roadkill, he has gone on to direct many other acclaimed films including Hard Core Logo, The Tracy Fragments and Pontypool.
Freider Hochheim
Freider Hochheim (IMA ’77) worked in the industry as a gaffer primarily on feature films which led his creative mind to invent a color correct fluorescent lighting system called Kino Flo. This innovative system rapidly changed the way movies were made and resulted in an Academy Award for technical achievement In 1995.
Yuri Dojc
Yuri Dojc (IMA ’74) Yuri’s multi-lens trajectory has pivoted from an established commercial photography practice to his current gaze as an artful observer of the vestiges of history’s most vulnerable. Since the late 1990s, he has been documenting Slovakia’s last living Holocaust survivors and the country’s abandoned synagogues, schools, and cemeteries for a series called Last Folio.
MaryAnn Camilleri
MaryAnn Camilleri (IMA ’91) created the Magenta Foundation, a trailblazing charitable arts-publishing house that showcases the work of talented artists on a global scale. It draws attention to under-represented and emerging artists with powerful exhibitions and a roster of impressive international publications.
Edward Burtynsky
Edward Burtynsky (IMA ’82) is one of the world’s most respected contemporary photographers and his award-winning depictions of industrialized landscapes are featured in over sixty major museums worldwide.
Jeremy Podeswa
Jeremy Podeswa (IMA ’84) wrote and directed three award-winning feature films before becoming one of the top television directors in the world, nominated four times for Emmy Awards for shows like Game of Thrones.
Pia Di Ciaula
Pia Di Ciaula (IMA ’92) is an internationally renowned film and television editor whose recent credits include Tyrannosaur and The Crown, Netflix’s multi-BAFTA, Emmy and Golden Globe winning series.
Stephen Bulger
Stephen Bulger (IMA ‘91) owner/operator of the Stephen Bulger Gallery, represents photography at the highest level having curated over 150 exhibitions and published many catalogues and books.
Peter Mettler
Peter Mettler (IMA ’82) holds a unique position for his innovative merging of cinema with other disciplines and his film, Picture Of Light, was recently selected by TIFF as one of Canada’s Essential 150 Canadian Films.