Glowing Aspens, Castle Creek Valley, Colorado 1991

About John Sexton

John Sexton was born in 1953 and has lived on the Monterey Peninsula in California for more than forty years. Respected as a photographer, master printmaker, author, and workshop instructor, he is best known for his luminous, quiet, black and white photographs of the natural environment. In 2018 John was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum, St. Louis, Missouri. After more than fifty years John still finds magic in exposing and processing film, and making silver gelatin prints, by hand, in his traditional darkroom at his home and studio in Carmel Valley, California. John shares that home and studio with his wife and photographer, Anne Larsen, and their black and white cat, Boots.

John's most recent book is Recollections: Three Decades of Photographs, an award-winning retrospective volume, published by Ventana Editions. John's previous award-winning books include Quiet Light, a monograph representing fifteen years of his work, and Listen to the Trees, which were published by Bulfinch Press/Little, Brown and Company, along with Places of Power: The Aesthetics of Technology published by Ventana Editions.

He is Director of the John Sexton Photography Workshops program, and for more than forty-five years has taught photography workshops throughout the United States and abroad, emphasizing traditional silver gelatin printing techniques and personally expressive photography. Some of these organizations include: Anderson Ranch Arts Center, The Ansel Adams Gallery, Maine Photographic Workshops, The Friends of Photography, and The Palm Beach Workshops.

John's informed and entertaining lectures for photographic and professional organizations, colleges, universities, and museums discuss the aesthetic and technical aspects of expressive photography. He has presented lectures for, among others, Adobe, Apple, Kodak, George Eastman House, Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, Boston University, Oregon State University, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Bowers Museum, Monterey Museum of Art, Museum of Photographic Arts, New Hampshire Institute of Art, Portland Art Museum, and the Seattle Art Museum.

A recipient of the 2005 North American Nature Photography Association Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2014 American Society of Photographers International Award, John is a consultant to Eastman Kodak Company and other photographic manufacturers. He worked as both Technical and Photographic Assistant, and Technical Consultant, to Ansel Adams from 1979 to 1984. Sexton assisted Adams in the darkroom and in the field, and conducted all the technical testing on the revised editions of Ansel's books The Negative and The Print. Following Mr. Adams' death Sexton served as Photographic Special Projects Consultant to The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust. Along with serving as an instructor at number of the Ansel Adams Yosemite Workshops, Sexton was the director of that program in the early 1980's. From 1985 to 1993 he was a member of the Board of Trustees of The Friends of Photography.

John's photographs are included in permanent collections, exhibitions, and publications throughout the world. His work has been featured on the CBS Sunday Morning show, and on the MacNeil Lehrer News Hour. Bank of America, General Motors, Eastman Kodak Company, and Apple, Inc. have used his photographs in national advertising campaigns. Sexton's photographs have been featured in numerous periodicals including: Time, Life, American Photo, Backpacker, Photo Techniques, Darkroom Photography, LensWork, View Camera, Black and White, Zoom, Outdoor Photographer, Outside, The Washington Post, and Popular Photography.

About the Image

As many know, most of my prints are issued as non-numbered open editions, but over the years I have offered a small number of limited edition prints.

My new limited edition print is Glowing Aspens, Castle Creek Valley, Colorado, and is being released as part of my ongoing Darkroom Edition series. This image was made following one of my annual two-week workshops that I taught at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, Colorado. During the workshop I always led a field session to this beautiful aspen grove in Castle Creek Valley, one of my favorite stands of aspens. I have included an excerpt from a brief essay which I dictated one afternoon as I was walking through this stand of aspens. The essay is titled "Within the Forest" and is the Preface in my book "Listen to the Trees."

Forests are sanctuaries. This aspen forest is like a room, with luminous white trunks for walls. I find myself looking upward to the green leaves quaking in the wind... toward the ceiling of thunderclouds passing by. In the distance thunder rolls through the valley... the sound of birds singing within the forest mingles with the remote whisper of a creek as it rushes over the rocks in its path. The forest creates an envelope like a protective cocoon. I feel at one with the trees, more comfortable among hundreds of them than in a group of people.

The print Glowing Aspens, Castle Creek Valley, Colorado is printed on Ilford Warmtone fiber-base photographic paper. The print is offered in a Limited Edition of 75 signed and numbered silver gelatin prints, plus 10 Artist's Proofs. The print is approximately 10-1/4 x 13-1/4", personally printed by me (as are all my prints), processed to current archival standards, numbered, signed, mounted, and overmatted to 16x20" on 100 percent rag museum board. 

This negative has been retired by John for traditional silver printing, and will never again be printed in any size as a silver gelatin print. Once the small number of remaining prints are gone there will be no additional silver gelatin prints available for sale.

Ordering Information

Special orders from the artist may take up to 6 weeks for delivery. 

Please contact us at info@anseladams.com if you have any questions about shipping and delivery.