Supposed Ansel Adams Negs Found at a Garage Sale

david b · Oct 30, 2009

Not sure if this has been posted before.

Some guy bought a bunch of glass plate negs at a garage sale for $45.

See the video here

(isn't patrick alt a member here?)

Ektagraphic · Oct 30, 2009

Amazing! I would love to be that guy!

bdial · Oct 30, 2009

I go to the wrong garage sales.

mrmekon · Oct 30, 2009

bdial said:
I go to the wrong garage sales.

No kidding. This, and finding 8x10 view cameras at thrift stores? All I ever find are APS point-n-shoots

Kerik · Oct 30, 2009

Wow, how cool is that. Patrick!!

Kerik · Oct 30, 2009

Hmmm... the plot thickens:

But the grandson of the artist is unconvinced of the claims.

Mr. Norsigian has been making these claims for a number of years and I have not seen convincing proof that they are Ansels negatives, Mathew Adams was quoted as saying.

People have been photographing Yosemite since the late 1800s and that fact there are glass plate negatives of images of Yosemite does not therefore mean that they are Ansels.

Mike1234 · Oct 30, 2009

Bullshit is very difficult to sift through. However, I do wish I had a pile of million dollar bullshit from which I could extract a nice income.

No negativity intended toward the OP. It's just my sense of incredulity, skepticism, cynicism, etc. creeping through. It sounds like an eBay-type scam to me.

Toffle · Oct 30, 2009

Hmmm... Very cool to have found a whole box of glass negatives, but I wonder... was Ansel really fond of crooked horizons? (I only mention, because judging from some of my prints, apparently I am... :rolleyes: )

Kerik · Oct 30, 2009

Yeah, it seems a little sketchy, but who knows. The red flag for me is that his attorney is described as an "entertainment lawyer" in one of the articles I read/saw. The handwriting issue seems pretty strong, but who is their expert? Seems they need some independent evaluation to cooberate.

SchwinnParamount · Oct 30, 2009

Kerik said:
Hmmm... the plot thickens:

But the grandson of the artist is unconvinced of the claims.

Mr. Norsigian has been making these claims for a number of years and I have not seen convincing proof that they are Ansels negatives, Mathew Adams was quoted as saying.

People have been photographing Yosemite since the late 1800s and that fact there are glass plate negatives of images of Yosemite does not therefore mean that they are Ansels.

I'd agree with you except for a couple of things.

1) one of the negatives was compared to a negative absolutely known to be Ansels. Judging from the time of day, the shape of the snow pack in the back ground of the picture, the precise matching of the viewpoint... down to the focal length, the suspect negative had to be taken with an 8x10 camera using the same focal lenth, in the same location (to the inch), in the same hour of the same day.
2) Virginia's handwriting was on the manila envelopes containing the negatives.

SchwinnParamount · Oct 30, 2009

Toffle said:
Hmmm... Very cool to have found a whole box of glass negatives, but I wonder... was Ansel really fond of crooked horizons? (I only mention, because judging from some of my prints, apparently I am... :rolleyes: )

Uh... those negatives were hidden away in a wooden box and never saw the light of day for 50 years and were never published as prints precisely because of those crooked horizons. Ansel was a great guy and really smart but he was human and made mistakes.

This box was filled with his mistakes.

Toffle · Oct 31, 2009

SchwinnParamount said:
Uh... those negatives were hidden away in a wooden box and never saw the light of day for 50 years and were never published as prints precisely because of those crooked horizons. Ansel was a great guy and really smart but he was human and made mistakes.

This box was filled with his mistakes.

I'll buy that. We all have more than a few negatives (or a few boxes full) we would never want to have shown as representative of our work. I'd venture to say, though that there are probably more crooked horizons made by the hordes who have followed the trail of tripod marks Ansel left in creating his masterpieces.

Cheers,

AmandaTom · Oct 31, 2009

Maybe Virginia took the pictures. That would account for her handwriting and the crooked horizons.

juan · Oct 31, 2009

Entertainment lawyers deal extensively with issues of copyright. I think that's exactly who I would turn to if I were in the purchaser's position.
juan

billbretz · Oct 31, 2009

Crooked horizons? I have only seen images that are "stills from a video" or in the newscast piece itself. Am I looking in the wrong place, or are people making judgments based on the video/stills - which were clearly shot without concern for the horizons?

billbretz · Oct 31, 2009

More interesting than the horizons is the concept that these images are worth a lot of money. Of course, they are worth whatever someone will pay, which is apparently a ton of bucks. Aren't plenty of Ansel negatives available for study (to proper researchers)? Adams shot A LOT. I would imagine thousands, maybe tens of thousands of his "slides" (as the newscast calls them) exist. And Ansel is no longer around to print them. I see it a little like finding Picasso's paints or perhaps marble Michaelangelo might have planned to sculpt. A painting or statue might be in them, but it will never be an original completed work by the master. Modern prints from people who worked closely with AA are available today and worth a lot less than a million dollars. I'm not discounting the value of the find (would love to have made it myself), but I don't understand the economics that would make it seven figures.

Robert Brummitt · Oct 31, 2009

This is almost a great book. It reminds me of the stories of folks finding a lost master painters work in their attic. Of course the Adams family will be reserved on the matter. It's a loose thread of AA that they may not be able to control or profit from.

SchwinnParamount · Oct 31, 2009

billbretz said:
More interesting than the horizons is the concept that these images are worth a lot of money. Of course, they are worth whatever someone will pay, which is apparently a ton of bucks. Aren't plenty of Ansel negatives available for study (to proper researchers)? Adams shot A LOT. I would imagine thousands, maybe tens of thousands of his "slides" (as the newscast calls them) exist. And Ansel is no longer around to print them. I see it a little like finding Picasso's paints or perhaps marble Michaelangelo might have planned to sculpt. A painting or statue might be in them, but it will never be an original completed work by the master. Modern prints from people who worked closely with AA are available today and worth a lot less than a million dollars. I'm not discounting the value of the find (would love to have made it myself), but I don't understand the economics that would make it seven figures.

AA's intentions were that his library of negatives would be shipped to the University of Arizona to be used in the department of photography. That never actually happened. The controllers of his Trust knew the value of the negatives.

SchwinnParamount · Oct 31, 2009

AmandaTom said:
Maybe Virginia took the pictures. That would account for her handwriting and the crooked horizons.

She wasn't interested in photography as far as I've read in any of the AA biographical works or the auto-biography.

Mike1234 · Oct 31, 2009

I've seen some instances in which practically identical photos were taken by different photographers not only on different days but different years. Sometimes there's really only one obviously good vantage point.

MattKing · Oct 31, 2009

I was listening to CBC Radio 2 yesterday and Tom Allen was talking about this.

He was speaking about this in the context of "those generally useless things that people buy at garage sales that usually have no value, but infrequently turn out to be worth a lot of money".

I got to thinking about these glass plates and realized that I would have considered buying them and would most likely would enjoy owning them even if I knew that they had no market value, because I just think that they are neat.

Matt

Christopher Walrath · Oct 31, 2009

Toffle said:
was Ansel really fond of crooked horizons?

Perhaps another arguement for finding them, having been discarded as they were. Um, that would be a NO, Tom.

sun of sand · Oct 31, 2009

That tree/bristlecone? photo isn't imo in the tripod holes
Ansels tree is bowing the other is reaching
Bowing tree seemingly blocks a nipple-like peak on the horizon

I figure anyone with a camera up at that tree would have taken a photo
How popular of a spot is it?

It doesn't seem the snowpack is the same, either. Completely identical? I see quite a few areas that don't match up and the ones that do probably match up much of the time
On video, of course
Doesn't mean he didn't make separate trips, either ..but same day same time same channel?

I've taken a few photos that were remarkably similar to anothers work I saw a year later

patrick alt · Nov 12, 2009

Ansel Adams Negs-The Real Story

Hi everyone,

Just thought I would give you all of the story re the Ansel Adams lost negatives. The evidience is so overwhelming as to make your head spin. So in a nutshell here are the facts;

Shot on 6 1/2 X 8 1/2 glass plates with a Korona as confirmed on page 3 of Ansels book Examples. This was one of his primary cameras of the 1920's. By coincidence, I also own the same camera.

Several images have definite fire damage due to his studio fire in 1937.

Virginia Adams handwriting are on the paper sleeves. Confirmed by independent hand writing analysis.

These are definitely in the style of Ansel's work as they evolved over a period of time. To see them as I did you could just feel his presence.

Lastly, one of the plates are an almost exact match to 2 5 X 7 images in The Center for Creative Photography in Tuscon. This is an image of a Jeffries Pine and close examination show the distant snow pack to be identical, meaning these images were taken moments apart. The is undeniable proof.

Lastly, these negs were originally found in LA after the time Ansel was here in LA teaching at Art Center. I believe he brought them down as teaching tools.

All of this evidence has convinced me without a shadow of a doubt that these are indeed lost treasures of Ansels early work that survived his fire. I am so honored to have been chosen to be a part of this team of experts and my knowledge of both Ansel's work and of being a working large format photographer has helped make this what I believe to be an airtight case. Why Matthew Adams and the Foundation continues to discredit this work, especially in light of the fact he has never seen them is a mystery to us all. It has been an incredible experience to hold these images in my hands. They are the real deal.

Patrick Alt

steven_e007 · Nov 12, 2009

Many years ago,under slightly bizarre circumstances, I came across a scrapbook of prints that appear to be by Frank Meadow Sutcliffe. Hardly as renown as Mr. Adams, but a fairly well known and respected British photographer of the late 19th and early 20th C.

Despite a great deal of circumstantial evidence (such as the prints being signed "F.M.S", which was a bit of a hint!) the people who own the Sutcliffe estate were also rather negative, claiming they were not Sutcliffe prints. Later I visited the Bradford museum of Photography, who own a Sutcliffe collection, and they has sequences of certain prints, taken a short time apart. I clearly had 'missing' prints from some of these sequences. It was pretty conclusive, but on reapproaching the custodians of the Sutcliffe estate they were again most uninterested and dismissive. In my case what I have is only of curiosity value, they are only prints, not negatives and of no real financial value, but the knee jerk 'they can't be genuine' reaction did seem very familiar!

Supposed Ansel Adams Negs Found at a Garage Sale

david b

Ektagraphic

bdial

mrmekon

Kerik

Kerik

Mike1234

Toffle

Kerik

SchwinnParamount

SchwinnParamount

Toffle

AmandaTom

juan

billbretz

billbretz

Robert Brummitt

SchwinnParamount

SchwinnParamount

Mike1234

MattKing

Moderator

Christopher Walrath

sun of sand

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Supposed Ansel Adams Negs Found at a Garage Sale

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