Controversy surrounds supposed Ansel Adams negatives
A man who bought a box full of glass negatives for $45 at a yard sale in 2000 thinks he has $200 million worth of early Ansel Adams’ work on his hands, but his family disagrees.
It was announced yesterday at a press conference that Rick Norsigian, a painter for the Fresno school district, bought a set of 65 large-format glass negatives at a garage sale for $45 back in the year 2000. A final report (PDF link) was released at the press conference, and it purports that these images may represent some of the 5,000 that were feared lost by Adams when his studio was destroyed by a fire in 1937.
Working with various experts in handwriting and photography, it is believed that these glass negatives were indeed early works of Ansel Adams, and a value of $200 million has been placed upon them.
However, following the press conference, Matthew Adams, the grandson of Ansel Adams and the president of the Ansel Adams Gallery in Yosemite, told AOL News, “I think it’s irresponsible to claim that they’re Ansel. We think it’s a very significant claim and we think it’s not accurate.”
His reasoning is two significant pieces of evidence. His grandmother, Virginia, had lived in Yosemite all of her life, and the names of certain locations are misspelled on the negatives. Mrs. Adams was responsible for labeling all negatives. The most glaring example is the misspelling of “Bridalveil Fall” as “Bridalvail Fall”, to which Mr. Adams said, “There’s no way that an intelligent, articulate woman of 33 years old who had lived there her whole life would misspell that.”
The second piece of evidence is the missing numbers. Mr. Adams said that his grandfather had a numbering system for all of his negatives, and there are no numbers on these, making him highly suspicious of their origin.
Despite the high valuation, which Mr. Adams referred to as “ludicrous”, Mr. Norsigian and his lawyers claim they attempted many times to include the family in the authentication process, but they repeatedly declined the offers. The handwriting experts are sticking to their belief that the writing on the negatives is that of Mrs. Adams, but where the argument goes from here is unknown at this time.
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July 29th, 2010
Obviously fakes, the man in the photo is wearing a shirt that was popular circa 1945. Sometimes you need to examine the evidence before your eyes.