Online Photography alumnus displays work at popular ceramics studio
26 August 2025
Studying Photography MA(Online) has been described as “one of the best decisions I have made” by Nick Diprose, a Falmouth alumnus who is now exhibiting his work at his local pottery studio, Loam Studio. The photography on display is the art he created as part of his Final Major Project (FMP), a touching series that draws on the secret relationship of his late father in post-war Japan, which he discovered in a series of handwritten letters.
We chatted with Nick to learn more about the inspiration behind the series, how the Loam Studio exhibition came about and how studying online with Falmouth helped him to embark on a new creative journey.
Can you tell us a little more about the fascinating story and inspiration behind your photographs?
After my father died, I chanced upon a box of his archival materials in the loft. There, I discovered his letters from a friend called Setsuko, and it was a hugely significant family moment; it felt almost like a script for a drama. The letters, written to him in pencil in Japanese, revealed a love affair between the two of them with war and its aftermath acting as a deeply emotional and traumatic backdrop. My father had kept the letters secret all his life.
Aged 18, my father had arrived in Hiroshima as part of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force. It was 1947 and cherry blossom season. Cherry blossom, or Sakura, became emblematic of the story of transience I wanted to tell through my art. I didn’t know my father’s replies to the letters, so cherry blossom became central, – being so fragile and tactile. I put together a story from objects as, without my father’s verbal testimony, I had few real facts, just a fractured narrative.
The surfaces of objects my father brought back from Japan offered an intimate insight. Consequently, surfaces and materials offered shape and dimension to my research. Ishiuchi Miyako’s photography of artefacts from Hiroshima considers objects “material witnesses”, communicating to us past lives and events. Her ghostly lightbox-lit clothing of Hiroshima’s victims evokes a silence in me. “Each item,” she says, “is time in tangible form”.
My work is tactile in nature, echoing the interdisciplinary nature of my creative learning over the past two years at Falmouth. I could feel the archive materials and run my fingers over the contours of written Japanese characters on thin washi paper, serving as an 80-year-old metaphor for the half-life of time.
My last portfolio image is of a dried flower and is in part a homage to Miyako’s work, expressing time as compressed into traces we can touch, feel and see. It also signifies an ending.
You currently have your photography displayed at Loam Studio in Petersfield. Can you tell us more about the exhibition?
I started learning to work with clay a little before I began my Photography MA, and I still attend pottery and ceramics classes at Loam Studio. I get on well with the owner, Jack, and I asked if I could display the images from my FMP to get some live public feedback. He said yes straight away and once he saw the photographs of cherry blossom, he wanted to keep them on the studio wall permanently. This was amazing because it meant my work could be enjoyed and critiqued by class attendees.
This August, the studio has been one of the host galleries for Hampshire Open Studios, which has been an opportunity for me to exhibit more images from my FMP. A further six were framed for the county-wide exhibition.
How did you find your time studying photography online at Falmouth?
It’s been a creative reawakening for me across multiple artistic disciplines. My professional career has been as an entrepreneur in recruitment and business services where I created and built several successful brands. Despite my career in business, I love making things and always had a yearning to reactivate my creative brain. It was when I was on holiday in 2023 that I saw an Instagram advert from Falmouth which hit the spot.
It’s been a very supportive and hugely engaging experience from integration through to teaching and my final submission. The in-person campus visits each July were excellent from a learning perspective but also in getting to know fellow students and teaching staff. This year on campus I learned about studio photography with industry leading facilities and superb teaching – it’s inspired me to do more myself.
My time studying online at Falmouth marked the beginning of a new journey in photography. It’s one of the best decisions I have made. It was a welcoming and supportive learning environment where I felt I could rerelease my creative self, build friendships and best of all, meet up in Falmouth! A big thank you to Jesse Alexander and his team of teaching staff, who all without exception are excellent!
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