MFA in Photography and Media at California Institute of The Arts
(JUNE 2025) In Fall 2025, Julian Clay Shelton will begin his MFA in Photography and Media at California Institute of The Arts. This marks a formal transition into academic study following an unconventional and autodidactic emergence into the art world.
Shelton’s current photographic practice began taking shape in 2022, after an extended period of creative withdrawal during COVID. With no prior art education, his entry into CalArts follows a body of documentary and narrative-based work shaped by lived experience, field immersion, and thematic inquiries into collapse, structural violence, and masculinity.
His forthcoming work will engage long-form photographic storytelling and conceptual ensemble strategies, focusing on semiotic resistance, insurgency, and the symbolic architecture of domination. The CalArts MFA will serve as both a structural anchor and a critical testing ground for this evolving practice.
Further updates will follow as the work develops.