Is there a field of physics that attempts to understand the properties of light from a single perspective? Hearing about the wave-particle duality of light, I can’t stop wondering whether there is a field of study that attempts to understand the properties of light from a single perspective.
Is there such a field of study?
 A: Yes - quantum field theory; gauge theory in particular.
A: Yes, that theory is called quantum electrodynamics, or QED. It predicts all of the “particle” behaviors and all of the “wave” behaviors of light from a single unified mathematical model.
QED was the first successful quantum field theory. Since its development other similar field theories have been developed for the strong and weak nuclear forces. So currently duality is not a problem in physics.
A: I would argue that there is no such theory. It's tempting to consider quantum field theory to be that theory. That is, to see quantum fields as the unifying structures of waves and particles. But quantum fields can wave too. They can behave like particles too. It is even said that particles are excitations of a quantum field but I think this is too far-fetched. Particles are particles and quantum fields are just mathematical structures that show their (weird) behavior. The ultimate constituents of matter are (almost) pointlike particles, as assumed in both quantum field theory and quantum mechanics. In the case of light, this means that only photons are real. Sometimes, a collective of these particles shows wavelike behavior (a single particle never can), like in the double-slit experiment, sometimes they show particle behavior, like in high energy experiments.
So it's not QED that unites the two directions but the simple fact that waves are properties of collections of particles, be they photons or electrons or whatever elementary particle to which we can assign a quantum field. In this case point- like photons. Wavy Nature becomes apparent only if we consider a huge amount of these photons. Photons travel in all directions, at any speed, forward and backward in time in going from one point in spacetime to another, while these points are determined by the interaction of the photons with charged particles anywhere, while these charged particles on their turn are determined by interaction with other charged particles or macroscopic objects. All different paths have a certain probability amplitude and it's this amplitude that gives rise wavy behavior of collections of photons. This is the case when you look at a classical electromagnetic wave. All this photon craziness adds up, resulting in the classical em wave.
A: I interpret the question as follows: is there a field that studies electromagnetism either exclusively from the wave concept or exclusively from the particle perspective.
The answer to this question is no. There are fields of applied physics that use only the wave perspective, but this is a practical choice. Ray optics and wave optics are tools for optical and RF design. On the other hand, I don't see how there can be a field that studies electromagnetism exclusively in terms of photons, without considering the waves that describe these.
QED and QFT use both particle and wave aspects, so these theories are not based on a single perspective as meant in the OP.
A: The "duality" only comes in when you make a measurement. So the confusion about this duality is really just confusion about the measurement problem in Quantum Mechanics.
The fact that light is a wave is reflected in the description of the electromagnetic field as an element of a complex linear vector space.
The particle aspect is simply reflected in the fact that this vector space has an inner product defined on it that allows you to project a state onto a given state that you are interested in. In other words, it is a Hilbert space.
The quantum description of the electromagnetic field takes both these aspects into account by construction, so there is no need for a new perspective. Quantum mechanics was designed to solve this problem about 100 years ago.
(QED is such a theory, but it contains other things, namely the interactions with charged matter.)
