{"id":5815,"date":"2010-10-31T22:49:02","date_gmt":"2010-11-01T02:49:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/?p=5815"},"modified":"2010-10-31T22:49:02","modified_gmt":"2010-11-01T02:49:02","slug":"team-norsigian-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/2010\/10\/31\/team-norsigian-16\/","title":{"rendered":"Team Norsigian Accentuates the Negative (16)"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Team Norsigian’s “Report on Earl Brooks” (2)<\/strong><\/p>\n

(Continued.<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Here are more of the problems I have with Team Norsigian’s “Report on Earl Brooks,”<\/a> released on October 8, 2010. The passages in italics represent quotes from the report:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Earl Brooks. Detail of photo by Graham Hughes.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2022\u00a0“In order for [Brooks] to have made these negatives in the same size as Ansel Adams, and at a time when few photographers were using glass negatives, Earl Brooks would have had to have a high level of skill and expertise in exposing and developing large format glass plates. . . . [T]here is no evidence that Brooks received training (formal or practical) in the creation and processing of glass negatives or worked with anyone who had such a level of expertise. . . . Exposing and developing large-format glass plates requires a skill level that would have been remarkable for even a serious commercial photographer of that time period. . . . Those who steadfastly espouse the Uncle Earl theory have not offered a shred of evidence to corroborate that Brooks was trained or ever worked with glass negatives. . . . The Absence Of Any Glass Negatives Directly Linked To Earl Brooks Tends to Show That Brooks Did Not Have The Requisite Skills To Create The Norsigian Negatives.”<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Glass-plate negative, courtesy Wikimedia.<\/p><\/div>\n

More uninformed nonsense. Fragility aside, exposure, development, and printing of commercially produced glass-plate negatives such as those in the Norsigian Collection are not significantly more difficult than, nor indeed much different from, the processing and printing of similarly sized commercially produced sheet film. Any competent studio photographer of the period had the tools, materials, darkroom setup, and skills necessary to generate and process such negatives. The one portrait we have so far of Earl Brooks shows him before a large-format view camera, presumably one he used in his studio practice; from this evidence, it’s reasonable to infer that he knew how to handle any negatives he made with it.\u00a0(Peter & Co., in their ignorance of basic issues of photography, may have confused such glass-plate negatives with wet-collodion negatives, which would indeed require unusual skills to expose and develop. But wet-plate collodion as a medium had become obsolete circa 1900 \u2014\u00a0replaced consecutively by dry collodion plates, then by dry silver-halide\u00a0plates \u2014\u00a0decades before anyone claims these negatives were produced.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Walton print, left; Norsigian negative, right.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2022\u00a0“Brooks’ attributed body of work does not exhibit the caliber of skill and detail that would have been required to create the images in the Norsigian Collection.”<\/em> The reference here is to\u00a0an 81-image cluster of portraits, theater stills, and industrial interiors by Brooks<\/a>, presently in the collection of the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, DE. Team Norsigian uses a quote from\u00a0a prior post of mine<\/a> to justify this assertion: “[T]he Brooks images in the Hagley archive constitute a mix of studio portraits, theater stills, and factory interiors: competently made and utterly conventional, typical \u2014 like his landscapes \u2014 of an unexceptional journeyman photographer of the period.\u201d The quote is accurate, but you have to misread it drastically to construe it as proposing that production of the California landscapes required a different “caliber of skill and detail” (whatever that means) than the commercial work in the Hagley Library’s collection. To the contrary, my statement proposes that all these works, including the landscapes (if his), are “typical . . . of an unexceptional journeyman photographer of the period.” Moreover, the report’s mention that “Brooks also apparently served as an official photographer for the [Philadelphia]\u00a0Sesquicentennial International Exposition of 1926” suggests that he was not only technically competent but quite versatile, as such a professional commission would most likely entail the production of other kinds of images than those he made his stock in trade at his Delaware studio.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Robert C. Moeller III's website.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2022 Team Norsigian published this “Report on Earl Brooks” on October 8. It willfully ignores the fact that, on August 30, the team’s \u201cart expert,\u201d\u00a0Robert C. Moeller III<\/a>, switched sides, publicly announcing his endorsement of the “Uncle” Earl Theory. \u201cI made a mistake,\u201d said Mr. Moeller. (See Reyhan Harmanci\u2019s August 30\u00a0New York Times<\/em> story,\u00a0\u201cA Turnaround in Ansel Adams Photo Dispute.\u201d<\/a>)\u00a0It also willfully ignores the fact that, on October 6, the team’s \u201cphotography expert,\u201d\u00a0Patrick Alt<\/a>, publicly announced his inclination to abandon the Ansel Adams Theory he’d enthusiastically helped Team Norsigian to promote (without, I should add, endorsing the “Uncle” Earl Theory). That’s simply dishonest.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Top to bottom: Peter Arnold, Esq., Barbara M. Rubin, Esq., and Jody Simon, Esq., of PRS Media Partners, LLC.<\/p><\/div>\n

The true “red herring” here, then, is Team Norsigian’s “Report on Earl Brooks”<\/a> itself \u2014 clearly intended to suggest that Team Norsigian energetically pursues all leads, in order to distract us from the fact that they continue to refuse to conduct forensic testing of the negatives, refuse to bring a qualified photo researcher on board, and refuse to take the “Norsigian Collection” to Tucson for direct comparison with Adams materials from the same period. As they say in the press release accompanying the “Report on Earl Brooks,”<\/a> “proper authentication is the key to this mystery.” The ball’s in their court insofar as initiating such authentication goes. But they’d sooner save the appearances by rushing about looking busy with unnecessary made work like this pointless report on Brooks.<\/p>\n

Rick Norsigian, Arnold Peter, and the rest of their posse can run from that truth. But they can’t hide from it any longer.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Reportedly, we can expect more material relevant to Brooks to emerge shortly, courtesy of his granddaughter, Brook Delarco, who promised same in\u00a0an extensive Comment posted here on October 15<\/a>. (Scroll down to the Comments area for this.) From what she indicates, photo albums, writings, and other Brooks documentation exists to verify his photographic trips to Yosemite. We’ll have to wait and see if this provides any confirmation of Brooks’s production of the Walton prints.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, consider the two following images, extracted from\u00a0a New York Times article<\/a> by\u00a0PI<\/em> reader Richard Kuzniak and juxtaposed by him for easy comparison. On the left you’ll see one of the four Walton prints that she inherited from her uncle Earl Brooks. On the right, a positive derived from a Norsigian negative. (Kuzniak notes, “The red check marks are what I perceive to be damaged areas of the Norsigian neg.” Click on the image to view a larger version.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It seems highly probable to me that the print reproduced on the left was made from the negative represented on the right, back when said negative was in its pristine state. If that’s the case, then we can anticipate the following:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Team Norsigian continues to insist that all the Norsigian Collection negatives came from the hand, eye, and camera of Ansel Adams.<\/p>\n

\u2022 If so, then any vintage print therefrom would necessarily be an original Ansel Adams print.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Scott Nichols, proprietor of\u00a0the eponymous San Francisco Gallery<\/a>, has studied the four prints in the possession of Earl Brooks’s niece, Marian Walton, and has asserted that they’re authentic vintage prints.<\/p>\n

\u2022 If one or more of Walton’s prints matches a Norsigian negative, as several appear to do, then Walton, de facto, owns an original Ansel Adams vintage print or two, which Team Norsigian’s crack team of “experts” must logically certify as such \u2014 even though this print bears none of Adams’s standard identifying markings for his prints.<\/p>\n

I hear hoofbeats . . . and here comes Arnold Peter, astride his white horse, riding in once again to save the appearances!<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

For an index of links to all previous posts related to this story,\u00a0click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Team Norsigian says in the press release accompanying the “Report on Earl Brooks,” “proper authentication is the key to this mystery.” The ball’s in their court insofar as initiating such authentication goes. But they’d sooner save the appearances by rushing about looking busy with unnecessary made work like this pointless report on Brooks. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[42,54,82,174,209,326,393,406,452,453],"class_list":["post-5815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-commentary","tag-ansel-adams","tag-arnold-peter","tag-brooke-delarco","tag-earl-brooks","tag-glass-plate-negative","tag-marian-walton","tag-patrick-alt","tag-peter-rubin-simon-llp","tag-rick-norsigian","tag-robert-c-moeller-iii","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5815\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}