I've merged these as it seems both threads are discussing the same course.
I've merged these as it seems both threads are discussing the same course.
For a 15 minute overview, you could just extract the major points from this page: https://www.largeformatphotography.info/why.html
History of Photography by Beaumont Newhall.
There's not much of a history of large format photography. The cameras themselves - monorail, field, press - haven't changed much in the last century, and the basic functions and techniques - rise, fall, shift, tilt, swing - were pretty much set early, with some camera models having more or less possibilities available.
History of large-format-photography practitioners, however, is much more interesting because although the camera itself doesn't change, its practice does follow the evolution of photography as genre and art, the evolution of individual artists, as well as that of society and the meaning of images.
So what I would do, if I had to give a brief overview to "photo enthusiasts", is, after showing them quickly the basic functions of the camera, give them a sense of the possibilities of the medium by showing them a few examples of some of it's most famous practitioners - in chronological order: Atget, Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Eliot Porter, Stephen Shore, Robert Adams, Robert Avedon, Alec Soth.
There are others, of course, from which to pick, just wrote down the first that came to mind.
As I said, this is what I would do - seems to me "photo enthusiasts" would be like "music enthusiasts" in that they would much more prefer listening to Beethoven, Chopin and Debussy than hearing me talk about how a piano works
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