The absence of anyone on Team Norsigian with any real grounding in photo history (and I certainly include Alt in that assessment) gives the consortium a serious credibility gap. Team Norsigian’s intimation that they’re somehow spearheading an Adams revival is purely delusional. The failure to include anyone savvy enough to prevent this posse from shooting itself in the foot repeatedly in this fashion definitely ups the odds against their prevailing. […]
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I have none of the specialist skills necessary to contribute usefully to this investigation, nor any preferred outcome here. So I concern myself with the quality of the discourse from the two camps — and, for my money, Team Norsigian has so far proved itself measured, judicious, and open-handed, as opposed to the frothing apoplectic rage and deceitful doubletalk coming from the Adams herd. […] This minor event has evoked such hysteria and vituperation from the Adams marketing machine — which does not own the negatives in question or have any claim thereto — that this phenomenon in itself merits some examination. William Turnage, managing trustee of the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust, actually compared the claims of Norsigian to the Nazi propaganda strategy of the “big lie.” “Hitler used that technique,” Turnage said. “You don’t tell a small one. You tell a big one.” It takes one deeply sick puppy to analogize Norsigian’s assertions of authenticity for these negatives to the despised Nazi propaganda technique. Turnage should feel ashamed of himself for this loathsome conduct, which embarrasses him and the Ansel Adams Trust as well. […] At the moment it seems that the attempt to find a permanent home for the remainder of the collection is sincere. One hopes that the success of the auction does not allow greed to start to creep into the thinking of the creditors, or Polaroid’s bankruptcy trustee, John Stoebner. Hopefully they will not be asking for too much in return. There is little chance that another sale of remaining works would generate a fraction of the excitement or prices that this sale did. Not only has the cream of the crop been removed, but as has been shown with numerous second sales of supposedly rare material — like the second de Prangey sale of early daguerreotypes — these sales more often than not fall flat and never live up to expectations. […] |
 SPJ Research Award 2014 |
Team Norsigian Accentuates the Negative (2)
Team Norsigian’s “Final Report of Investigative Team” begins thus: “There is no uniform or standardized method of authenticating photographs. Unlike a painting, there is no signature or unique brush strokes method attaching the artist to a photograph. Therefore, each investigation into the provenance of a photograph must be unique and individualized.” Yet photographs get authenticated — and disauthenticated, if that’s the word — every day, via methods not nearly so arcane or customized as this report suggests. […]