Lawyer Says He Helped Client Show That $45 Garage-Sale Buy Is Worth Some $200M
Updated: After paying $45 for a box of old negatives at a garage sale a decade ago, a Fresno, Calif., painter noticed that some looked like the published work of famed black-and-white nature photographer Ansel Adams.
Although the family of Adams pooh-poohed the possibility, Rick Norsigian finally hired a lawyer to help him assemble a team of experts to determine whether there might be a link. The result was an announcement today by his Los Angeles attorney, Arnold Peter, that 65 negatives are from the early work of Ansel Adams in the 1920s and 1930s, although they had been thought destroyed by a fire in 1937, reports the Fresno Bee.
An expert estimates that the negatives could result in a payday of some $200 million, although Norsigian says he has no plans to sell and expects to exhibit at least some of the photos that can be made from the glass plates. He also plans to sell reproductions via a website.
However, “when I heard that $200 million, I got a little weak,” Norsigian admitted at a news conference today at the David W. Streets art gallery in Beverly Hills.
“This has been such a long journey. I thought I’d never get to the end,” he adds. “It kind of proves a construction worker-painter can be right.”
A Wall Street Journal article about the find says the $200 million figure includes not only prints but other licensing arrangements. The highest price ever paid for a known Ansel Adams work was $722,500 last month at auction at Sotheby’s in New York for a photo known as Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park.
Others aren’t convinced of the authenticity of the claimed Ansel Adams find, reports the Associated Press.
Among the doubters are managing director Bill Turnage of the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust, who describes the claim that the negatives were taken by Adams as “an unfortunate fraud.” He is mulling a possible lawsuit against Norsigian concerning his use of a copyrighted name for commercial purposes, the news agency reports.
But their best chance of succeeding with a copyright claim might be to assert rights to reproductions from the claimed Norsigian find, as a subsequent ABAJournal.com post explains.
To pursue that legal angle, however, could be painful: Legitimate copyright holders claiming the profits from all reproductions would have to assert that the glass plates are, in fact, the work of Ansel Adams.
For more details about the evidence that persuaded the experts Peter retained that the negatives are the real deal, read the full story.
The art gallery also provides a copy of a press release issued by the Peter Rubin & Simon law firm.
Last updated July 29 to include information from subsequent ABAJournal.com post about potential copyright claim.
