From intimate political portraiture to backstage awards-season candids, these SVA alumni photographers are making headlines for images that define the moment.
Actress Jessie Buckley backstage at the 2026 Golden Globes. Photo by BFA Photography and Video faculty member Guy Aroch (BFA 1993 Photography).
Actress Jessie Buckley backstage at the 2026 Golden Globes. Photo by BFA Photography and Video faculty member Guy Aroch (BFA 1993 Photography).
In this edition of The Five, we turn the spotlight on SVA photographers capturing the moment in different registers—documentary portraiture with real political stakes, pop-cultural heat checks, and backstage glamour. Together, they’re a reminder of the ways that photography can preserve what power would rather blur, and sharpen or complicate the public-image machine when everyone is watching.
1. Heated Rivalry, HBO’s hockey drama/love story, is all the rage right now. Late last month, The New York Times covered its out-of-nowhere success in an article with portraits of the lead actors Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams by Ryan Pfluger (MFA 2007 Photography, Video, and Related Media).
Sydney Sweeney and Christy Martin, photographed at Trinity Boxing Club in New York City by Clay Patrick McBride (MPS 2013 Digital Photography; BFA 1995 Photography).
Sydney Sweeney and Christy Martin, photographed at Trinity Boxing Club in New York City by Clay Patrick McBride (MPS 2013 Digital Photography; BFA 1995 Photography).
2. Clay Patrick McBride (MPS 2013 Digital Photography; BFA 1995 Photography) photographed a digital cover story for Sports Illustrated featuring actress Sydney Sweeney and boxing legend Christy Salters Martin at Trinity Boxing Club in New York City for the biopic Christy. McBride’s images are poised, tough, and intimate, matching Christy’s story of reinvention and the body-as-narrative.
3. Emma Rose Milligan (MFA 2018 Photography, Video and Related Media; BFA 2015 Photography and Video)—who we profiled in 2024—photographed Hugh Jackman for USA Today, capturing the actor in the run-up to his latest movie, Song Sung Blue, and then shared the behind-the-scenes reality of the assignment—proof that the moments of calm that audiences see often come from controlled chaos.
Federal workers who were either fired or forced out of their positions by the Trump administration, photographed by Dina Litovsky (MFA 2010 Photography, Video, and Related Media).
Federal workers who were either fired or forced out of their positions by the Trump administration, photographed by Dina Litovsky (MFA 2010 Photography, Video, and Related Media).
4. Dina Litovsky (MFA 2010 Photography, Video, and Related Media) photographed federal workers who were either fired or forced out of their positions by the Trump administration for The Atlantic, pairing intimate portraits with a sense of sweeping institutional rupture. The accompanying article lays out how quickly the “purge” metastasized across agencies—and how individual careers, missions, and lives got upended along the way.
5. The Hollywood Reporter’s gallery of photographs from the 2026 Golden Globes was a reminder that some of the awards show’s most electric moments happen away from the microphones. BFA Photography and Video faculty member Guy Aroch (BFA 1993 Photography) was there to catch the honorees’ candid moments, the exhales of relief, and recalibrations before facing the next press room.
Filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson backstage at the 2026 Golden Globes. Photograph by BFA Photography and Video faculty member Guy Aroch (BFA 1993 Photography).
Filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson backstage at the 2026 Golden Globes. Photograph by BFA Photography and Video faculty member Guy Aroch (BFA 1993 Photography).