When Photography makes you a profit

thewing

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/07/27/ansel.adams.discovery/index.html?hpt=C1#fbid=Acet-xRl8NV

Investment of $45 could be worth $200m....I could afford a 1DS-Mark IV!

sNarah

Wow that is rather impressive... God knows what all the junk I buy a fleamarkets might be worth (probably nothing but wishfull thinking!)

To avoid having to click the linkie, here's the story:

Los Angeles, California (CNN) -- Rick Norsigian's hobby of picking through piles of unwanted items at garage sales in search of antiques has paid off for the Fresno, California, painter.
Two small boxes he bought 10 years ago for $45 -- negotiated down from $70 -- is now estimated to be worth at least $200 million dollars, according to a Beverly Hills art appraiser.
Those boxes contained 65 glass negatives created by famed nature photographer Ansel Adams in the early period of his career. Experts believed the negatives were destroyed in a 1937 darkroom fire that destroyed 5,000 plates.

DaireQuinlan

Hmm, I wouldn't be so sure. Whatever about the ownership of the plates, I'm willing to be that the Ansel Adams foundation will come down on him like a ton of lead bricks if he actually tries to sell prints made from them. Ansel died in 1984 so all his work is still very much under copyright. He'd be better off selling the entire collection to some museum or something. That's assuming that the Adams family don't just try to re-acquire the plates themselves.

smash

200m.... I'd sell them ASAP!

Thecageyone

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

Hmm, I wouldn't be so sure. Whatever about the ownership of the plates, I'm willing to be that the Ansel Adams foundation will come down on him like a ton of lead bricks if he actually tries to sell prints made from them. Ansel died in 1984 so all his work is still very much under copyright. He'd be better off selling the entire collection to some museum or something. That's assuming that the Adams family don't just try to re-acquire the plates themselves.

I think he'd have a case against them as he purchased it in good faith. It is his property now.

magicbastarder

he physically owns the negs, but not the copyright. he can sell the negs, but not any images made from them.

no more than buying the master tapes of 'exile on main street' would mean you could start selling rolling stones CDs.

Fajitas!

I'd assume Copyright > Good Faith if he was to start reprinting them.

smash

If they're worth 200m I'd fail to see any point in selling prints. A bird in the hand and all that...

Thecageyone

Sell the neg's in that case. He'll still make a fortune.

mrboswell

Thecageyone wrote: »

Sell the neg's in that case. He'll still make a fortune.

Well if his past history is anything to go by he'll probably sell the negs and keep the cash in a box in his garage!

Morrisseeee

Adams = meh :eek:






/only kiddin

Nforce

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

That's assuming that the Adams family don't just try to re-acquire the plates themselves.

magicbastarder

steve06 wrote: »

If they're worth 200m

that'd be valuing them at over $4m each. and they're damaged.

mrboswell

magicbastarder wrote: »

that'd be valuing them at over $4m each. and they're damaged.

Sell them quick - before they get even more damaged!!

punchdrunk

mrboswell wrote: »

Sell them quick - before they get even more damaged!!

ah a bit of auto levels,and unsharp mask in PS,sorted!

Calina

Might not be that simple. Apparently Uncle Earl took them.

Barname

update....

It was a dream come true, straight out of “Antiques Roadshow.” In 2000 Rick Norsigian, a painter in a school maintenance department, bought a box of photo negatives at a garage sale in Fresno, Calif., for $45. Last month, a decade later, he stood in a Beverly Hills art gallery to announce that a team of experts had concluded “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Ansel Adams had taken the pictures.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/14/arts/design/14photos.html

But a fairy-tale ending is eluding Mr. Norsigian. A day after the announcement, Matthew Adams, a grandson of the photographer, disputed the finding, questioned the credentials of the experts and went so far as to call the whole business a “scam.”

(feel free to merge this update with AA thread posted on breaking news of same.... I couldn't find)

mrboswell

Barname wrote: »

update....



http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/14/arts/design/14photos.html



(feel free to merge this update with AA thread posted on breaking news of same.... I couldn't find)

Grandson is probably raging that he missing out on his cut!!

smelltheglove

Its a very interesting story, wow that Streets fella comes across well dodgy!

magicbastarder

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11068391

LionelNashe

He's charging $1500 for a digital print & $7500 for a silver gelatin dark room print.
http://www.ricknorsigian.com/lost_html/prints.html

A lot of incentive for Norsigian to bend the truth or to believe what he wants to believe, but the Adams trust reminds me a bit of the way that Joyce's grandson protects Joyce's work very jealously.

CabanSail

The reason that Adams is so well regarded is that his images were very good quality. This was from the the whole process, of capturing the image and then printing from that negative.

This quote sums it up;

The negative is comparable to the composer's score and the print to its performance. Each performance differs in subtle ways.
Ansel Adams

What has been found is a collection of glass negatives. They may be from Adams or they could be from Uncle Earl (or someone else) If they are good images then they should have a value. Regardless of who took them, they are incomplete if the Photographer has not finished the job.

Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships.
Ansel Adams

In a perfect world each image should be valued on it's own merit, but in the Art world the providence has a lot to do with the valuation. It all reminds me of the Billy Bragg Album from many years ago....