Garage sale find turns out to be Ansel Adams negatives

[mjs1973]

To sum it up, a guy paid $45 for 2 boxes of old glass plate negatives a decade ago. They are now estimated to be worth $200 million!

http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/07/2...ex.html?hpt=C2

[racedraper]

ya I seen this. Amazing. I acually got to use Ansel Adams negatives when I live in Arizona. He donated some of his work to the Univeristy of Arizona. its called the center of creative photography. I was in Awe the enitre time.

I will go to one of the cities that will show the negatives.

[mjs1973]

I would go too if it came close enough to me.

Here is an update on the story. Not everyone is convinced that the negatives are from Ansel Adams.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/cele...ex.html?hpt=C2

[drg]

There are some other questions about the 'dating' of the images to what Adams was known to be shooting. The photos that have been shown publicly so far may or may not fit chronologically with what Adams was known to have photographed at the time. Stieglitz, his first real 'dealer' who organized the first Adams show, cataloged a lot of work that isn't generally associated visually with his later work and it doesn't fully match up. The nature and scenic material in these newly discovered photographs look a lot more like his post war work or from one of several extremely well documented periods that Adams himself meticulously noted.

The chronological ordered images in A.A. printed collections show photographs of a different type than some dated contemporaneously from this find.

Photo District News posted an article(click for link) on their website on 7/28/2010 that adds details to the story. Some may indeed be from Ansel Adams. There's a good chance someone is looking to make a lot of money too!

[mjs1973]

More to add to the story...

http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/cele...ves/index.html

[freygr]

From what has been said on the news, I think they may not be Adams work. But there is not any way of disproving or confirming that it is Adams work unless the photos where published before Adams lost the negatives.

[drg]

From what has been said on the news, I think they may not be Adams work. But there is not any way of disproving or confirming that it is Adams work unless the photos where published before Adams lost the negatives.

These are the negatives. Glass plates are negatives and that's what was sold in a box at the garage sale.

Pretty conclusive evidence could be had if the plates are properly compared to 'known' Ansel Adams plates from the same period. How big the images are on the plates would be one test as each camera of the period was all but hand made and they all masked differently. That's just one 'easy' comparison to use to see if they could be AA work.

A great number of AA's actual equipment is still available to compare against and see if the plates in question could at least be eliminated.

The question at the moment is whether the authentication was performed by not only someone qualified, but by multiple independent authorities. What has been reported so far indicates that experts who should have been involved have only at best been marginally consulted.

The big thing in the end is that AA considered his prints to be the real 'art work' and not the negative. AA was a great printer and even the printers he trained still are not Ansel Adams.

[drg]

The story continues to have emerging details about the reliability of the players involved. A New York Times story in the past week examines just who 'authenticated' and 'evaluated' the images.

The article-

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/14/ar...me&ref=general

[JamesV]

And yet another addition to the story......

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100824/...dams_lost_work

James