By what authority did Ansel Adams come to have Yosemite National Park to himself as a prime marketing location from which he could sell his own prints, books, and workshops for something like five decades — a most-favored-photographer status enjoyed by no other since? And what entitles his descendants, two generations removed, none of them making art, to continue that tradition by running a private for-profit gallery on some of the choicest real estate in the entire national park system, for the express purpose of distributing the Adams family product line and other trade goods? Is this cash cow some exclusive Adams family perk in perpetuity? […]
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Team Norsigian’s last hope? Authentication of the negatives as made by Adams. In that case, as I’ve proposed, the negatives themselves will have market value as museum-quality artifacts. And the only way to authenticate the negatives is to dump the original Team Norsigian posse (with the possible exceptions of the meteorologist and handwriting experts), bring in a set of recognized and reputable researchers, and head to the CCP in Tucson. If the proof’s anywhere, it’s there. Time for Team Norsigian to learn to make nice with the CCP, instead of haranguing them inappropriately. […] Team Norsigian’s strategy has been haplessly ass-backwards from the git-go. They should have started quietly, with a serious forensic investigation by recognized experts, using the resources at the Center for Creative Photography (where Adams’s archive resides) to verify or disprove Adams’s authorship of the negatives. Based on the results, they could have moved forward to announce Adams’s authorship, if hard evidence justified that. Then they could perhaps have negotiated some agreement about rights licensing with the Adams Trust and Adams Gallery. Instead, they sent in the clowns — a more improbable and implausible cluster of self-styled experts than I could have invented ― for a comedy of errors. […] 
In pursuing this story I also take into account what we might call the “Inspector Clouseau factor” — the possibility that a bumbling incompetent (or even a busload of shlemiels and shlemozzles) could blunder and stumble into the correct solution to a puzzle. So I’m keeping an open mind on that subject, trying to separate hard evidence from irrelevancy, fact from fiction, and significant clues from red herrings. […] |
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Guest Post 7: Patrick Alt on the Norsigian/Adams Negatives
I was . . . retained not as a research historian. . ., but [for] my encyclopedic knowledge of cameras, lenses, and the more technical aspects of the plates. . . . As to the current status of my stance on the Norsigian plates, after hearing the opinion of my old friend John Sexton, who is convinced they are not by Ansel, I am now leaning toward that as well. I trust John’s integrity and his long history with Ansel and if it is good enough for John, I think I should follow his lead. […]