Ansel Adams didn’t take pictures in garage-sale find, says top photographic institute housing his archive
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A leading photographic institute has weighed in, belatedly, against Rick Norsigian’s claim that the 65 old-fashioned glass-plate negatives he bought 10 years ago at a Fresno garage sale represents a ‘lost’ trove of Ansel Adams images from the 1920s.
The Center for Creative Photography, which Adams himself helped establish in 1975 at the University of Arizona in Tucson, houses all 44,000 of his negatives and is a leading resource for researchers into his and other photographers’ work.
The center had refused to comment since July 27, when Norsigian unveiled what he said was evidence establishing that the pictures were Adams’, with an appraised worth of more than $200 million.
‘We are aware of the claims made by Rick Norsigian regarding photographic negatives in his possession. We have no reason to believe that these negatives are, in fact, the work of Ansel Adams,’ said a statement issued Tuesday by the center’s director, Katharine Martinez.
The statement added that the center ‘supports the efforts of the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust to protect its rights in this matter.’ The trust, which decides who has the right to reproduce Adams’ work, last week sued Norsigian and a marketing consultant working with him, alleging that their attempts to advertise and sell his images as Adams’ work violated the trust’s trademark rights.
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-- Mike Boehm
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