Success Quote by John Sexton

Even three decades in, Sexton is still insisting on mystery, and that insistence is the point. The “new surprises” aren’t accidents he tolerates; they’re proof that photography, at its best, stays alive beyond technique. By framing surprises as things that “rear their heads,” he gives them a slightly unruly, almost animal agency. The craft isn’t a straight line of mastery. It’s a practice where the materials push back.

Then comes the provocation: “51%… takes place in the darkroom.” The number is cheeky in a teacherly way - not a scientific claim, but a rhetorical nudge. He’s tipping the scale just past half to dethrone the myth that the decisive moment in the field is everything. For an Ansel Adams disciple working in the tradition where printing is interpretation, the darkroom is where intention becomes legible: contrast choices, dodging and burning, paper selection, the timing that turns an exposure into a statement.

The subtext is a defense of labor people prefer to romanticize away. Photography culture loves the heroic shooter - the lone eye catching lightning. Sexton redirects credit toward patience, revision, and the unglamorous hours of problem-solving under safelight. “In the darkroom” also reads as metaphor: the private space where you confront your own taste, your own compromises, your willingness to edit yourself.

Context matters: as an educator spanning analog and digital eras, he’s quietly arguing against push-button complacency. Tools change; the need to shape meaning after the shutter doesn’t.