John Sexton Original Silver Prints

Untitled Document

ASPENS, DUSK, CONWAY SUMMIT, CALIFORNIA

This print can be ordered securely online at a special discounted price.

This print is available for a limited time at the very special price of $600.

This image was made during one of the many annual Owens Valley Photography Workshops based each October in Bishop, California. On each of these workshops - taught by Bruce Barnbaum, Ray McSavaney, and myself - we made an all-day field trip to the ghost town of Bodie, near Mono Lake. After photographing most of the day there, we would stop at Conway Summit, a spectacular viewpoint along Highway 395 overlooking many hundreds of aspen trees.

I had been assisting a number of workshop participants during the late afternoon and after the sun had set. Most people were packing up their cameras when, for me, a luminous glow began to appear in the aspen grove quite sometime after sunset. I set up my 4x5" camera and made this image. I can vividly remember the crunch of the leaves that had already fallen from the trees. As the light level dropped the illusion of illumination on the white aspen trunks seemed to intensify. Working with my 210mm lens (the only lens I owned for my 4x5" view camera at the time!) I made this two-minute exposure at f/22 on Kodak Tri-X Professional film.

In 1984 - twenty-five years ago - Kodak used this image as the centerpiece for their advertising campaign, introducing their flagship black and white paper, Kodak Elite Fine Art. Aspens, Dusk, Conway Summit was reproduced as a two-page spread in virtually every photography magazine around the world. Thousands of posters and brochures featuring this image were printed for photographic retailers in the USA and abroad. In addition I traveled to Photokina in Germany, and had an exhibition there printed exclusively on the brand new Kodak Elite Fine Art paper. During Photokina, I was part of a press conference announcing the new Kodak paper to the photographic world. Having this image so widely reproduced around the globe was a great boost to my fledgling photographic career. You can see two of these "vintage" Kodak advertisements featuring Aspens, Dusk here.

While making the prints for this Special Collector's Edition offering, I can still clearly remember exposing the negative and the excitement I had the first time I printed this image in my darkroom. I hope the online reproduction can convey some of the soft, quiet luminosity that these stately aspen trunks reveal in the original print. If you happen to own my first book Quiet Light, you can find this image reproduced as Plate 21.

This silver gelatin, selenium toned, print is approximately 10-3/8x13", personally printed by me (as are all my prints), processed to current archival standards, signed, mounted, and matted to 16x20" on 100 percent rag museum board.

Prints will be shipped within three weeks from the date of order.

All prints are carefully prepared and packaged in specially designed protective shipping boxes, and shipped fully insured via UPS ground.

The special discounted price is $600 � a $300 savings from the normal retail price of $900.

Normally there is a long waiting period for John's original prints. This is a rare opportunity to obtain a print with a short waiting period, and at a special discounted price.