The Expressive Black and White Print Workshop by John Sexton

Rafal Lukawiecki and John Sexton at John Sexton Workshop 2011

After many years of think­ing about it, I have taken the cour­age to apply to attend John Sexton’s fam­ous The Expressive Black and White Print work­shop — click here for the Fine Tuning work­shop — which he has run for 29 years, hav­ing star­ted in the days when he was Ansel Adams assist­ant. I was delighted to have been accep­ted, and I arrived in Carmel Valley, California, on the even­ing of 15 November 2011, where I met sev­en oth­er attendees, from all over the world: Alastair Firkin, Frank, Herb Swick, Linda Fitch, Mike Reeves, Stephanie Slaymaker, and Steve Hartsfield.

It was a very spe­cial learn­ing exper­i­ence, which I wish I had done a long time ago. As a res­ult of it I am chan­ging my work­ing habits, remov­ing a few older, and new­er, crutches from my pro­cess, and so aim­ing to sim­pli­fy it. I also have a desire to reprint some of the images from my (Be)Longing series. For that reas­on, I will replace those images with new inter­pret­a­tions later this year, at which point the ones shown on the web site will no longer be avail­able. If you are think­ing of get­ting one of these, please con­tact me soon, but on the oth­er hand, you might prefer their new­er versions.

John kept us incred­ibly busy, start­ing each day at about 8.30 AM and fin­ish­ing after 10 PM. One can admire not only his beau­ti­ful prints and exquis­ite books, but also his sheer energy and drive. No ques­tion received any­thing less than a thor­ough answer, even if it meant John’s spend­ing his own time run­ning an exper­i­ment overnight, just to be sure of his answer, as happened when we dis­cussed the mat­ter of developer-incor­por­ated pho­to­graph­ic papers. I was sur­prised by the find­ings, which are con­trary to some man­u­fac­turer­’s state­ments found on the web, but that is a sub­ject for anoth­er post.

John and his Camera at Point Lobos, CA

We spent most of the time in his amaz­ing pho­to­graph­ic stu­dio and dark­room, except for one pleas­ant out­ing at Point Lobos, where we prac­ticed some cam­era craft, espe­cially the dark­er secrets of using a spot-meter, guided by the man whose car num­ber plate appro­pri­ately reads “Mr Zone”.

In the Master’s Darkroom (from left: John Sexton, Alastair Firkin, Rafal Lukawiecki)

Print Bleaching Demonstration

Darkroom was the place of many demon­stra­tions of John’s tech­nique, and the spir­itu­al hub of the work­shop. We did not prac­tice ourselves (except at Point Lobos), which is a pity, but I real­ise that it would have made the work­shop either impossibly long, or rather super­fi­cial, which this one cer­tainly was neither.

Watching mas­ter at work is very edu­ca­tion­al, and as I expec­ted, I have learned as much by watch­ing his hands in action, as by listen­ing to his words. His dodging and burn­ing tech­nique is superb, and I wish I could rep­lic­ate some of the finest moves he demon­strated, while run­ning through a grace­ful sequence of 10 – 20 of them, all from his memory. Everything he showed us bordered on an obses­sion with per­fec­tion, set­ting a very high stand­ard to fol­low. Thankfully, such a ser­i­ous atmo­sphere was broken often by John’s humour and wit, as every­one enjoyed his stor­ies about the greatest in American pho­to­graphy, and about his own, some­times, irrev­er­ent past. John explained, how as a young photo retouch­er, he was tasked with remov­al of one of a duplic­ate set of catch­lights, from the eyes of a sit­ter­’s por­trait, which would usu­ally show when two light sources have been used — but, with a slightly unortho­dox approach: to remove the non-match­ing reflec­tions, giv­ing the eyes a slightly less-than intel­li­gent appearance…

I feel the most use­ful part of the work­shop was an in-depth port­fo­lio assess­ment. He spent nearly an hour on every­one’s ten prints, and then again, even more time on our pre-selec­ted three neg­at­ives. I was ter­ri­fied when my turn came, but John knows how to deliv­er his obser­va­tions in a way that makes sense without hurt­ing an artist­ic ego. I learned a lot by hav­ing my prints dis­sec­ted by John, and also plenty by look­ing at oth­er par­ti­cipants’ work, and hear­ing com­ments about it. I hope to have anoth­er chance to exper­i­ence this, per­haps when I have new work to show and share.

Anne Larsen Prepares a Print for Dry Mounting

Anne Discusses Print Spotting Techniques

To save John from near­ing total exhaus­tion, Anne Larsen, his lovely wife who is also a pho­to­graph­er, demon­strated the almost-secret aspects of print fin­ish­ing, includ­ing ways to dry-mount, over­mat, and spot them to per­fec­tion. Because the craft of tra­di­tion­al, sil­ver-gelat­in print­ing is not as widely prac­ticed as some 20 years ago, it is almost impossible to learn those tech­niques from any­one, and books do not cov­er the more obscure yet very import­ant aspects. I have much to thank Anne for her patience in explain­ing how to avoid “edge-long dimples” when dry-mount­ing cer­tain papers — a prob­lem I was fight­ing, with the help of APUG, for more than a year, and hey-presto, she comes with a simple answer, which prob­ably only took a dozen years of her exper­i­ence to fig­ure out. Anne was a delight to talk to, as she shared her quieter, reserved, and a prag­mat­ic per­spect­ive onto our art. And to top it off, Anne showed off her Danish-ori­gin cook­ing skills by pre­par­ing a few meals for us, tak­ing a break only when we were din­ing, or lunch­ing out on some of the days. Anne and John really made us feel like guests in their own home, not like stu­dents on a course, which in itself was humbling.

A whole week of being sur­roun­ded by John’s and Anne’s beau­ti­ful prints, and many gems by oth­er greats, includ­ing Adams and Weston, had quite an impact on me. It awoke a few ideas to try things dif­fer­ent, but it also com­manded me to the need to execute my prints with little scope for doubt, and a need to deliv­er the max­im­um I can muster, and to nev­er stop improv­ing. How did they all stick to their mis­sion so faith­fully for so long?

Selenium Negative Intensification

In addi­tion to going over the fun­da­ment­als that no one nor­mally both­ers with — like how do you thor­oughly clean a large format film hold­er? Tap it hard, and get an engin­eers vacu­um, or what is the best pen to use for writ­ing notes on the edges of neg­at­ives — John covered a few rarer, but very use­ful tech­niques, of which I was impressed the most by sel­en­i­um neg­at­ive intens­i­fic­a­tion, which even seemed to work select­ively on por­tions of neg­at­ives. Needless to say, look­ing around his dark­room every­one must have picked up new ideas, as the entire place oozed with dec­ades of thought and prac­tice. I have already re-plumbed my tempered water taps, a new sink is on its way, and a paper light-safe draw­er is in the plans.

Importance of Carrying a Viewing Frame on Oneself

Still, it is not about the toys and the gad­gets, or a bet­ter lens (though a view­ing frame helps). The one thing that got rein­forced the most, is that it is all about hard work, not giv­ing up, and doing it over, and over, and over again, until it is right. Even if it takes anoth­er 29 years.