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Ansel Adams was an American photographer who became famous for his iconic images of the American West. His breathtaking black-and-white pictures helped to promote the conservation of nature as well as establish photography as a recognized and respected fine art. Scroll down to learn more about Adams with 10 interesting facts about his life and work.
At Photography West, we want you to have the art you love. To make the work more accessible, we offer interest-free layaway options to our valued clients. While most programs last 3 to 6 months, shorter or longer terms are also considered. Please contact us to discuss your personalized payment plan.
For thirty years (1983-2013), Photography West Graphics collaborated with Ansel Adams’ renowned book printer and lithographer, David Gray Gardner, until his retirement at age 87 in 2013. Together we set new standards for photographic reproductions and generated the finest quality photographic monographs of the era, winning numerous awards, including “Photography Book of the Year” from Friends of Photography. During press production, the photographers would join us on site at Dual Graphics in Brea, California, to personally inspect and approve the reproductions in their forthcoming book. The plates themselves were made from unique wet-process works handmade from film (not scans of film) with the desire to give readers an opportunity to experience what the original photographs would be like to hold in their own hands. Reproductions were sometimes individually spot varnished to produce a distinctive high gloss and text papers were heavier weight for the same reason. Bindings and end papers featured custom imported fabric and embossed with elegant designs in our later editions. Each book was considered an art project by our founder, Carol Williams, who worked closely with the individual photographers to present their images for more widespread public viewing.
With one exception – Ruth Bernhard’s, The Eternal Body (1986), which still enjoys printings by Chronicle Books (and recently Amazon!) and has sold over 30,000 copies – all our photography books were exclusively hardbound, limited, collectible first editions. In 2013, Photography West published a final concluding monograph, Roman Loranc: Absolution – Fifty Photographs from Europe. It won three awards, including the United States Literary Award for Fine Art Photography and the 2014 Gold Medal “North American Printer of the Year” for Dual Graphics.
In addition to our publications, we offer a select number of monographs from other exceptional publishers featuring our gallery photographer’s work.
Julia Brett Christopher (American, 1983 -) grew up in Carmel, California, in the heart of West Coast photography. Brett Weston, who doted on Julia as the grandchild he never had, fondly encouraged her to take up both photography and riding horses as a toddler. She spontaneously made her first photographs at Weston’s Carmel Valley residence at the age of two. After having taken classes at ICP (Institut Catholique de Paris) and graduating from Santa Catalina School, she went on to study classical painting at New York University’s Steinhardt and art history at their extension program in Paris, France.
She graduated Magna Cum Laude from the Gallatin School of Individualized Study in 2006, where she pursued abiding interests in fine art, philosophy, marketing, creative writing, and photography. While living in Manhattan, she was scouted by an agency and briefly worked as a model and event promoter, but far preferred being behind the camera than in front of it. During that time, she assisted fashion photographer, Howard Schatz, on a project about Club Culture. She departed New York for Europe in 2006, and returned to settle in Carmel in 2008, where she narrowed her artistic focus to medium format black and white film photography.
She began using Brett Weston’s former Pentax 67 camera and studied darkroom craft with Greg Mettler, Bob Kolbrener and Luther Gerlach, who introduced her to the 19th century wet plate collodion process. Today she pursues her own photography with a Hasselblad 205 TCC, while working as an educator, art historian, conservator, web developer, owner and CEO of Photography West, Incorporated, the first educational e-commerce platform devoted to wet-process photography. Each gallery photographer is an accomplished darkroom master, using film, archival photographic papers, and wet processes. Many have created their own darkroom chemistry, built their own cameras, and even invented their own unique, light-sensitive techniques. (Photography West has been told they are now the only photography establishment in the United States that does not show digital or digital/darkroom multimedia processes like film-scanning).
At the publishing branch of the gallery, Photography West Graphics, she contributed to two major publications as both an author and editor – Brett Weston at One Hundred (2011) and Roman Loranc, Absolution: Fifty Photographs from Europe (2013). Over the last decade, Christopher has closed over $15 million in fine art photography sales, curated dozens of exhibitions and hosted various artist receptions, conducted in person and online lectures at colleges and photography groups, in addition to educating the general public about fine art photography.
Carol Williams never talks about her own work as a photographer, which is a surprise, considering the company she keeps in her gallery – Ansel Adams, Morley Baer, Christopher Burkett, Paul Caponigro, Kenro Izu, Roman Loranc, Don Worth and Edward and Brett Weston, to name a few. Williams co-founded Photography West Gallery in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California in 1980, with dear friends and fellow photographers Ron C. James (1937-2013), Claudette Bargeen Dibert (1942-1982) and the legendary Brett Weston (1911-1993) widely regarded as the child genius of American photography.
The gallery shows only accomplished darkroom masters using film, archival photographic papers and wet processes, each piece hand-crafted by the artist. “Brett used to tell me the integrity of the photograph depends on the photographers doing the darkroom work themselves,” Williams says of the late Brett Weston, with whom she had over a decade of “photographic adventures” spanning the Monterey Peninsula to the Big Island of Hawai’i. Not only has Williams persisted for 40 years in showing only artist-produced film photography, but Photography West Gallery is perhaps the only photographic gallery in the world today that holds this distinction.
The light and the rugged beauty of the Monterey Peninsula has famously attracted artists, writers and photographers since the early 1900s, with locales such as windswept Garrapata Beach and rocky Point Lobos. Edward Weston (1886-1958), who is credited as being the most influential American photographer of the twentieth century, moved to Carmel in 1929, and it was the images he created here that eventually would bring him international acclaim. He had four sons: Chandler, Brett, Neil and Cole, and it was Brett who would follow in his father’s footsteps. Brett’s career launched at age 13, when Edward brought him to Mexico, where he encountered the likes of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. By the time Ansel Adams moved to Carmel in 1962, Brett had had already established a name for himself, having won a Guggenheim fellowship in 1947 and exhibited internationally. Williams tells an anecdote that before Ansel Adams moved to Carmel in 1962, he called up Brett Weston and asked, “Do you think Carmel is big enough for both of us?”
At that time, photography was unrecognized as fine art. “In the 1970s, photography was taught in the journalism departments and not considered a legitimate art medium,” says Williams, who singles out a particular 1970 issue of LIFE Magazine as one of her early influences. She cut out images by photography icons Imogen Cunningham, Don Worth, and Jerry Uelsmann, mounting and framing the black and whites and displaying them in her dorm room at Western Washington University. “We were studying surrealism, and it was Uelsmann’s allegorical images that sparked my initial realization and conviction that photography should be included in the history of modern art,” she says. “It was this undeniable link to surrealism that really launched me into seeing photography as very significant modern art,” Williams says. “Jerry Uelsmann was the original catalyst for me.”
After graduating in 1974, Williams moved to Carmel, attracted by the art and photography scene of the Monterey Peninsula. Photography – indeed the arts – had largely been a man’s world, but Williams says that women in the area started taking up photography in the ‘70s. “It was a very free-spirited decade in California culture, particularly in Big Sur and Carmel. Many women were exploring their identities, and many used a camera to discover who they were or might be,” says Williams. “I definitely was investigating that genre in my own work.”
In her twenties, Williams worked by day in the library at Monterey Peninsula College and took photography classes at night. When she had a chance to meet Brett Weston at a Christmas party in 1976, she recalled thinking, “Oh! My opportunity to have a conversation with Brett Weston! I’ll ask him what light meter he recommends for a beginning photographer,’” The meeting proved pivotal: “Brett Weston declared, ‘no good photographer uses a light meter. If you can’t read the light on your skin, you shouldn’t be a photographer.’”
Owing to this unexpectedly shocking revelation, Williams never bought a light meter and changed her approach to photography. “I realized that photography is a significant exchange and interaction with light,” she explains. “It’s not just what you see with your eyes but involves the whole body. Your body is a light meter.” She continued to explore this concept in her work and photography classes.
Williams had never imagined ever owning a business. The idea of starting an artistic cooperative was contemplated with fellow photographers; however no one had either the time or money to make it happen.
In 1979, for the first time, the Small Business Administration began offering small business loans to women. Prior to that – a mere forty years ago — women needed a husband’s or male relative’s signature to apply for a loan. “I heard Jimmy Carter had a new SBA program to help women start their own businesses, so I went over to the local bank,” Williams remembered. In 1980, she became one of the first single women to be approved for an SBA start-up loan.
In a flash, the news spread around Carmel — a single, 29-year-old woman wanted to open a new photography gallery in town. But the gallery became inevitable once Brett Weston got word: a photographer told her Weston wanted to meet her. “She brought me to his house, and Brett opened the door saying, ‘So, you’re the young girl everyone says will lose her shirt opening a photography gallery; I’ll help you.’”
The two quickly connected. “He was a 51-year resident of the Monterey Peninsula and I was a 28-year-old newcomer, but there was a tremendous simpatica between us. We were just on the same page about photography, we were both totally obsessed and electrified by the images,” Williams recalls.
On October 25, 1980, five hundred people lined the streets of Carmel-by-the-Sea for the opening of Photography West Gallery. The opening featured a show of three new Brett Weston portfolios, seen for the first time: Leaves and Lava – Hawaii: 15 photographs from the Big Island; Abstractions, Portfolio #1, 1927-1980; and Abstractions, Portfolio 2, 1925-80. Copies of Weston’s newly released book, Brett Weston, Selections from Five Decades, were shipped in from New York, and Weston signed books all evening long.
Fine art photography was catching on, and the techies of the Silicon Valley were among its admirers. A young Steve Jobs came into the gallery in the early 1980s, admiring the work of Ansel Adams. “Steve asked if I would take a partial trade for his newest computer. ‘It’s called a Macintosh,’ he said hopefully,” she laughs. “We were both very young and just starting out, so I said sure, to help him out and ended up curating exhibitions for him at Apple and Next for the next decade!”
In 1985, San Francisco photographer Ruth Bernhard (1905-2006), whose images of nudes hang on the walls of Photography West, confided a concern to Williams. “Ruth said she knew there’d be a book of her photography after her death, but she’d hoped there’d be one while she was still alive,” says Williams. “I was concerned her work would be lost to history,” says Williams. “Ansel considered Ruth Bernhard to be the greatest photographer of the nude. But every commercial publisher I approached told me: ‘a woman photographer who does nudes in black and white? It will never sell.’ No one would publish her work. But then, it dawned on me that since I had a gallery, I could sell Ruth’s photographs to raise money for her book, so Ruth and I decided to collaborate.” Thus, a new chapter was born for Williams and the gallery: book publishing.
Adams introduced Williams to his printer, Dave Gardner, who at the time owned Los Angelesbased Gardner-Fulmer Lithograph. “He is legendary in the printing business for his patented Fultone process that by the early ‘80’s created incredible detail in reproduction quality by laserscanning the original photographs,” says Williams. Local photographer and graphics designer, Jerry Takigawa, created a simple design, and Williams published a series of limited edition posters to display in the gallery window. “Ansel would get all excited and dance around in front of his huge fireplace – nobody had ever seen such incredibly detailed reproductions,” recounts Williams.
Ruth Bernhard with her assistant Michael Kenna created five limited edition photographs to sell and raise money to publish Bernhard’s book. “We published Ruth’s book, The Eternal Body, ourselves,” says Williams. “Brett Weston was disappointed with the plate quality of his most recent book, so he also wanted a book featuring his best unpublished photographs. And that was how I got started in publishing.”
No commercial publisher wanted to produce books to the same high quality, according to Williams; it was expensive and there was no known market for them. “However, after my first two books won Photography Book of the Year from Friends of Photography, one of the publishers who had initially rejected Ruth’s book proposal called to tell me, ‘you’ve set a new publishing standard in photography books,’ and offered to buy the entire run. That first edition quickly sold out. The Eternal Body is the only book I ever reprinted – to celebrate Ruth’s 100th birthday.” Williams’ thirty-year collaboration with Dave Gardner resulted in eleven monographs for her gallery photographers. Her final monograph, a collection of fifty European photographs by Polish photographer Roman Loranc, entitled Absolution, was released in 2013. “It won several awards including the United State Literary Award and was my grand finale. Dave Gardner retired that year so I decided it was time for me to conclude book publishing,” she says.
Williams, now semi-retired, makes her home on the Big Island of Hawai’i. Brett Weston introduced her to the island in 1981. “For more than a decade, I would go to Hawaii every year and Brett and I would drive out at sunrise and have these amazing photographic adventures,” says Williams. Weston died in 1993 in Kona, Hawaii at age 82. “Brett was such a gift. A true free spirit, extremely loyal to the people he liked,” says Williams. “And never in my life have I ever met a person so in tune to light. He had a rare heightened intuitive sensitivity, it was always this quest for light.” All of the images that hang in Photography West Gallery are original, individually handcrafted photographs made with gelatin silver, platinum palladium or Cibachrome papers, from medium and large format film. With digital on the rise, darkroom materials are more and more difficult and costly to come by, Williams hopes that traditional light-based darkroom processes will be rediscovered and increasingly appreciated – not eclipsed as a relic from a by-gone era.
Written by Marina Blythe Davalos
The woman that Ansel Adams called “the greatest photographer of the nude.” Bernhard is world renowned for her classical and luminous forms which clearly transcend the boundaries between spirit and flesh.
With a delicate yet graphic sensibility, this East Coast medium format photographer shares a world of intimate simplicity with her viewers. Using traditional darkroom techniques, Ilford film and photographic paper, each work is carefully crafted by the artist’s own hand.
Martha Casanave is one of the most important West Coast portrait photographers of the past forty years. Awarded the Imogen Cunningham Photography Award for portraiture in 1979, she continues to approach her subjects with a distinctive eye that expands the genre of environmental portraiture historically associated with Arnold Newman.
Julia Christopher has dedicated her life to supporting contemporary photographers at Photography West. In her own work, she utilizes 19th and 20th century darkroom techniques, working primarily with medium format film.
Known as the “Grandmother of Photography” and a founding member of the Group f64, the powerful vision and realism of Imogen Cunningham influenced even Edward Weston as she pursued one of the longest and most important careers in the history of photography.
Inspired by the flower paintings of Georgia O’Keefe, Carol Henry spent six years inventing and perfecting her own unique process: “Florachrome” – a direct exposure of a flower onto Cibachrome photographic paper. Each piece is made without the use of a camera and a one-of-a-kind work of art.
Paying homage to the yin and yang of life through the fleeting life cycle of flowers, Yumiko Izu’s Platinum Palladium and Cyanotype alternative process photographs are not only a testament to her mastery of darkroom, but also her delicate focus on composition.
Born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Kerr’s intimate photographs of her native landscape capture a sense of symbiotic dichotomy – ephemera and permanence, passages and sanctuaries, reflections and revelations – on 4×5-format black and white film.
Originally a painter, Olivia Parker has been creating evocative still life collages for nearly forty years. One finds oneself enraptured by the immense depth and rich tonal range of her vintage photographs handmade with now discontinued Kodak Azo photographic paper.
Lilo Raymond’s photographs relentlessly pare away the inessential, presenting simple subjects – a nearly made bed, a vase of flowers by a window, enveloped in a rich veil of natural light.
Joyce Tenneson, author of Wise Women, has been voted among the ten most influential women photographers in the history of photography. Her luminous and unique oversized Polaroid’s and vintage gelatin silver self-portraits emanate a poignant, Pre-Raphaelite aesthetic sensibility.
Striking photographs of Yosemite and the surrounding Sierra Nevada capturing the elusive visual myth and mood of these wild places became the wellspring of Ansel Adam’s consciousness and brought him widespread popular acclaim.
Morley Baer spent a lifetime capturing the subtleties and intricacies of the California Central Coast while simultaneously earning acclaim for his brilliant architectural studies with his 8×10 camera.
An internationally recognized expert in the Cibachrome/Ilfochrome color-positive photographic process, many believe Burkett to be the finest color darkroom master in the history of photography. His compositions capture and transport us into the pristine American landscape upon which he focuses his lens
One of the major figures in the history of American landscape photography, Paul Caponigro has extended the spiritual genre of this medium to new, personal territory. Mystical and poetic, Caponigro’s philosophy has released a visual imagination that is possibly the most profound in contemporary photography.
Garnett’s work defies the stereotype of aerial photography as purely scientific and devoid of artistry. He became the first aerial photographer to earn the prestigious Guggenheim Award.
Distinguished for his beautifully toned, individually hand-colored intimate portraits and nudes, Michael Gesinger reveals his mastery and classic craftsmanship of more than thirty years in traditional photography.
Rolfe Horn’s early vintage prints reflect a dream like imagery and painstaking craftsmanship that culminated in three years (1998-2002) of assisting master photographer, Michael Kenna.
Kenro Izu’s photographs emanate a serene, meditative quality. Using 19th century photographic methods and recognized as one of the greatest living alternative process photographers, Izu’s exquisite series of Still Life, Nudes and Sacred Spaces capture the eye, heart, and spirit.
Widely exhibited and published for over thirty years, Michael Kenna’s simple yet sophisticated black and white compositions feature exposures lasting up to ten hours that have been described as enigmatic, graceful and hauntingly beautiful.
A book is not an isolated being – it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships. Sean Kernan extends this concept of Jorge Borges in his series entitled, “The Secret Books.” The Book becomes the starting point for a journey of inspiration and internal dialogue. You can find a universe in the pages of a book, if only you have the eyes to see.
Kolbrener’s commitment to having a prepared mind, and Edwards Weston’s concept of “significant presentation,” allows Kolbrener to react quickly to changing light and weather events in places of swirling character, such as the Big Sur Coast and Yosemite.
Renowned as a conservationist in California’s Central Valley, Roman Loranc’s sepia and selenium split-toned gelatin silver photographs emanate an old-world romanticist view of a contemporary California landscape.
Michael Miner has spent over thirty years as a cinematographer, screenwriter, and director of award-winning films. His love for the Monterey Peninsula and large format film photography is apparent in his serene yet striking black and white images.
Ranked among the top ten photographers in the world during his lifetime, the photographs of Pedro Luis Raota possess an unmistakable and distinctive Latin American heart forged from a spirit of infinite tenderness, raw realism and deep humanity.
William Scott’s photography was kindled by childhood trips to Ireland which heightened his awareness of the abiding power of place and sense of the unknown. His mesmerizing photographs of the California Coast are some of his most sought-after images.
Robert Taylor’s thirty years of devotion to working with an 8 x 10 view camera lovingly reflects his deep emotional connection to the rural farmlands of northern California, home to his family for four generations.
Alexey Titarenko uses long exposures and the subtlety of his black-and-white cameos to endow the reality he confronts with a metaphysical dimension, timeless and introspective.
The first true surrealist photographer, Jerry Uelsmann utilized multiple enlargers to create seamless photomontage compositions in the darkroom long before the invention of digital imaging and Photoshop.
In 1925, long before photography was accepted as a ‘legitimate’ art form, Brett Weston embarked upon a remarkable career in fine art photography that would span nearly seven decades. His strong, graphic use of negative space coined the term “Weston Black,” and his compositional use of two-dimensional special layering predates David Hockney’s by over a decade.
The fourth and youngest son of Edward Weston, Cole became the first of the Weston Legacy of photographers to embrace and explore color film photography.
Edward Weston was renowned as one of the greatest masters of 20th century photography. Awarded the first Guggenheim ever given to a photographer in 1937, his luminous images have influenced and inspired photographers around the world ever since.
Don Worth photographed plant forms for over sixty years. His images have an incisive clarity and quiet meditative mood that reflects his profound affinity with the natural world. As Ansel Adams first full-time assistant in the 1950’s and a student of Minor White, Worth left a unique legacy that merged impeccable darkroom craft with heightened mystical sensibility.
Alternative process refers to various darkroom methods that existed prior to the invention of gelatin silver. These methods involve hand-coating heavyweight cotton rag papers or other materials (metal, glass, wood or even fabric) with light-sensitive chemistry and exposing them to direct sunlight and.or artificial UV light. Cyanotype, Platinum Palladium and Wet Plate Collodion are a few examples of alternative processes.
Cibachrome, or lfochrome, is among the most stable of all color photographic processes. Each Cibachrome is composed of ten layers containing various combinations of light-sensitive silver halides and dyes that are sensitive to blue, green, or red light waves, which gives it an incredible depth and three-dimensional quality. In 2011, Cibachrome/Ilfochrome products were discontinued and it is now considered a historical process.
The chosen medium of Ansel Adams, Weston and countless other iconic masters of photography, this is the most popular black and white darkroom process. Gelatin silver is an emulsion of light-sensitive silver salts in gelatin applied to a sheet of paper coated with a layer of baryta, a white pigment mixed with gelatin. The sensitized paper, generally fiber-based, is exposed to light through a negative and then made visible in a chemical reducing solution. Because the silver image is suspended in a gelatin emulsion that rests on a pigment-coated paper, gelatin silver can be sharply defined and highly detailed.
The infamous instant film developed by Edwin H. Land that yielded a positive image, and depending on the type of Polaroid film (like Type-55), a negative as well. It was made as small as 24x36mm and as large as 20×24 inches. Joyce Tenneson, Chuck Close, Andy Warhol, William Wegman, Ansel Adams and Annie Liebowitz produced work with the 20×24 Polaroid before the film was discontinued in 2016.
Photographs handmade from medium format 120 film
Photographs handmade from 6×7, 4×5, 8×10, 11×14, or 14×20+ extra large format film
Photographs handmade from 6×7, 4×5, 8×10, 11×14, 14×20+ extra large format film
Photographs handmade from medium and large format, generally cropped 4×5 or 8×10 sheet film
Featuring a selection of new releases from contemporary artsits, as well as noteworthy recent acquisitions and consignments from private collections.
According to Brett Weston, “A true abstraction can be viewed from any hanging, including upside down.” Liberating for both the artist and viewer, abstractions allow for subjective interpretation. In a similar fashion, Jerry Uelsmann’s surrealist photography explores the dreamlike and bizarre aspects of life, for as he said, “The goal of the artist is not to resolve life’s mysteries, but to deepen them.”
Human beings have always been fascinated by the action and idea of flight. William Garnett (1916-2006), however, was the first to show us the beauty of flight. Using two 35mm cameras, one loaded with color film and the other with black and white, as well as a Pentax 6×7, he captured the American landscape from above, winning the first Guggenheim for aerial photography in 1953.
“The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.” – Charles Darwin
Like a photograph, animals speak to us without words. They have captured our hearts and minds, many becoming our life-long companions and in some cases, muses we feel inspired to capture on film.
Architectural photography is making art of art, framing the frame, paying homage to human creativity, line and design. This curated collection includes work by Morley Baer, Roman Loranc, Brett Weston, Ruth Bernhard and more.
Whether it’s the people, parks, skyscrapers or other historical landmarks, there is beauty to be found and a story to be told within every city block. From Brett Weston’s bridges to Roman Loranc’s cobblestone streets and Alexey Titarenko’s crowds, each photographer has their own unique way of capturing and immortalizing the cities in which they visit and live.
“The human body is first and foremost a mirror to the soul and its greatest beauty comes from that.” – Auguste Rodin
The human form has been depicted by painters and sculptors for centuries. Instead of a brush and chisel, photography draws with light and chemistry. From Ruth Bernhard’s classic torsos to Brett Weston’s electrifying underwater nudes, each artist in this collection captures the power and grace of our bodies.
“We need the tonic of wildness… We can never have enough of nature.” – Henry David Thoreau
From the dramatic Big Sur coastline to the majestic cliffs of Yosemite, the red rocks of Zion Canyon to the kaleidoscopic fall leaves in Virginia, the mystical misty rivers of Connecticut to the lakes of Lithuania, from heavy charcoal clouds to the light brush of fresh snow, each work in this collection emanates awe and admiration for the world around us.
“Portraiture is not a simple subject. It is far more than physical likeness, or capturing a single human emotion. A great portrait also contains the ability to evoke that emotion in others, or empathy. A great portraitist gives us a glimpse into who that individual really is and what their life is like – their hopes and fears, strengths and weaknesses, where they have been, who they have loved and lost – all in a single frame.” – Julia Brett Christopher
With the hustle and bustle of daily life racing along at a million miles per minute, we often need a moment to catch our breath and refocus. Be still, not just to smell the roses, but to see the veins in their petals; to notice the curves in a Nautilus shell following the same curve as a human hip, sunflowers and galaxies.
When it comes to fine art photography, the term “vintage” has a very specific meaning. Specifically, a wet process work handmade by the artist within 1 and no more than 5 years of the negative date. The term “early” is often used to describe works where the exact date of creation is unknown or difficult to determine, but the tonal range and brighteners in the photographic paper are consistent with works made within 10 years of the negative date. A work can be “early” and not “vintage.”
Vintage originals are in high demand by collectors due to their rarity and historical importance as the first works ever made from a negative.
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