Is there a way in conda to list only explicitly installed packages without the packages that were installed as dependencies?

The page that @Sjlver’s comment links to (https://github.com/conda/conda/issues/4545#issuecomment-616410225) has an answer.

conda env export --from-history

Please note that you need conda >=4.7.12 (released 2019) for --from-history (though you can use a newer conda to export an environment created with an older one).