In 1978 Robert Mapplethorpe secured his first solo exhibition outside of New York at Simon Lowinsky Gallery in San Francisco. While the original selection of work for the exhibition included the lot on offer, it was removed from the final selection along with eighteen others. Together the nineteen pictures, all early works from Mapplethorpe’s exploration in the s/m community, were exhibited at the non-profit art space, 80 Langton Street. The exhibition was appropriately titled Censored as a direct response to the challenges Mapplethorpe faced in securing a venue to show his rougher sex pictures, with a review of the opening night by Rita Brooks stating that patrons of the art circuit could now “rub shoulders” with the “men in black.” In the same year, further placing this work among the most important early s/m pictures by Mapplethorpe, a smaller print of Jim, Sausalito was included in the X Portfolio.

From the sold-out edition of five, three prints are in museum collections, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate/ National Galleries of Scotland; and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.