Robert Clarke-Davis

Large Format Photography introduces students to the ideas and aesthetics associated with a large-format view camera. Students will learn pre-visualization, camera movements, perspective control, large-format optics, and how to handle large format sheet film. Assignments focus on portraiture, landscape, studio, and architecture. Students are encouraged to develop a personal style via flexible assignments. Technical skills acquired include view camera setup and control, experience with sheet film, the zone system, large format scanning, and analog and digital printing. All enrolled students are assigned a 4x5 studio camera and will have access to an 8x10 and 4x5 field cameras, along with a variety of optics and accessories.

A variety of technical readings from multiple sources will help students understand perspective control, camera setup, lens choice, bellows extension, available film choices, exposure, and reciprocity compensation associated with large format photography. Additional readings and screenings will provide examples of historical and contemporary work created utilizing large format photography, and highlight the cameras meditative qualities and excellent resolution and control.

Large Format Photography introduces students to the ideas and aesthetics associated with a large-format view camera. Students will learn pre-visualization, camera movements, perspective control, large-format optics, and how to handle large format sheet film. Assignments focus on portraiture, landscape, studio, and architecture. Students are encouraged to develop a personal style via flexible assignments. Technical skills acquired include view camera setup and control, experience with sheet film, the zone system, large format scanning, and analog and digital printing. All enrolled students are assigned a 4x5 studio camera and will have access to an 8x10 and 4x5 field cameras, along with a variety of optics and accessories.

A variety of technical readings from multiple sources will help students understand perspective control, camera setup, lens choice, bellows extension, available film choices, exposure, and reciprocity compensation associated with large format photography. Additional readings and screenings will provide examples of historical and contemporary work created utilizing large format photography, and highlight the cameras meditative qualities and excellent resolution and control.

This course explores image-making through unconventional cameras, alternative processes, and creative interventions. From plastic lenses to pinhole photography, from cross-processing to digital manipulation, we will embrace and elevate the discarded, the imperfect, and the forgotten in an AI free zone. Using cameras like the Recesky twin-lens reflex, Konstruktor, Big Shot, Sunpet, and key ring cameras, as well as techniques such as zone plate and pinhole photography, students will push the limits of photographic perception. Inspired by figures like Henry Beck, we will champion low-tech and hybrid approaches, finding beauty in limitation and innovation in constraint. Through hands-on experimentation with both analog and digital tools, students will develop a personal approach to image-making that celebrates the unexpected.

This graduate level studio seminar course is a hybrid of reading, discussion, making and critique, designed to pursue positions in historical and contemporary philosophy, critical analysis, and current thought relevant to photography and visual literacy. Throughout the semester, the course aims to explore the past and future of visual media and to look at its discourse in relation to life as an artist in the greater realm of culture, society and politics. Course programming includes critical readings, short and informal writing assignments, work and research presentations.