Art & design (photography), gce a level

2. Course description Photography is the pre-eminent visual medium of the age, especially since digital photography has made it more available and added even more to its expressive potential. By exploring themes such as 'Light', 'Capturing the moment' and 'the truth', this course will teach you digital and traditional darkroom photography skills, how to express yourself and communicate ideas through photographs and how to understand different layers of meaning in images. As part of the course, you will visit galleries and exhibitions - locally and in London. These have included the Tate Modern, the Haywood Gallery, the Royal Academy, the Photographers' Gallery, the Whitechapel Gallery, the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich and Norwich Castle Museum. Each year there is also a visual arts trip abroad to a city renowned for its artistic heritage. Recent destinations have included Paris and New York. In Paris, students experienced an outstanding exhibition of women artists at the Pompidou Centre and also a magnificent collection of post-impressionist art at the Musee D'orsay. The trip to New York included the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum, the Guggenheim Museum, the International Museum of Photography, the Rockefeller Center as well as visits to the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building and Grand Central station. Each year there is an annual Visual Arts show, where Art, Photography and Textiles students show their best work in a gallery-style environment, open to the public. To succeed you will need curiosity, independence and initiative, and have an eye for a good picture. You will be willing to develop ideas and to investigate and analyse images and you will be persistent and hardworking. Assessment is through: A range of practical work including experiments contained in a work journal, finished pieces of coursework and a response to a theme set by the exam board...