📸 $45 negatives: Norsigian agrees not to use Ansel Adams's name

A federal lawsuit in California over who gets to say "Ansel Adams" on a print has ended the way many expensive arguments do: quietly, with the numbers sealed. The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust and Rick Norsigian settled out of court, according to a joint statement reported by The New York Times on March 15, 2011. The statement called the terms "confidential".

What it did disclose: Norsigian cannot use Adams's name in selling prints from his negatives. He may keep selling them "subject to a disclaimer approved by the Trust," the Times reported. The statement did not say what the disclaimer says.

The $45 box

The dispute began in the summer of 2010. CBS News reported on July 27 that Norsigian, a Fresno painter and construction worker, had bought a box of glass negatives at a garage sale for $45. He had bargained the seller down from $70, CBS reported. His lawyer, Arnold Peter, said a team of experts had concluded "beyond a reasonable doubt" that the 65 negatives were Adams's early work, believed destroyed in a 1937 fire at his Yosemite studio.

The key evidence, per CBS, came from two handwriting experts who identified the writing on the negative sleeves as that of Adams's wife Virginia. A meteorologist hired by Peter compared the clouds, snowdrift and shadows in one image with an Adams photograph and concluded both were taken at the same place on the same day.

The numbers

Beverly Hills art appraiser David W. Streets, CBS reported, conservatively estimated the negatives at $200 million, based on current sales of Adams prints and the potential for selling never-seen-before ones. Norsigian was already planning to capitalize: CBS reported a website selling prints from 17 negatives, priced from $45 for a poster to $7,500 for a darkroom print with a certificate of authenticity. A poster at the price of the whole box. Tidy.

For scale, CBS noted that Adams's "Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park" had fetched $722,500 at auction the previous month in New York, a record for 20th-century photography. CBC News reported that print came from the bankrupt Polaroid collection and had been estimated by Sotheby's at $500,000.

The other side

The Adams camp did not buy any of it. Turnage, managing director of the Trust, called the $200 million figure "ridiculous" and said the value of Adams's work lies in his darkroom hand-crafting of prints, making the negatives next to worthless, CBS reported. He said he was consulting lawyers about possibly suing Norsigian for using a copyrighted name for commercial purposes, and said the Trust had been dealing with Norsigian for a decade.

Matthew Adams, the photographer's grandson, who heads the Ansel Adams Gallery, told CBS he had reviewed the authentications the previous fall and thought them stretches. He said there were inconsistencies in the handwriting and misspelled Yosemite place names, that the evaporation clouds appear every day, and that the snowdrift in the comparison was on mountains 20 miles away. He said he had suggested carbon dating of the charring and the envelopes. CBS did not report that any such test was done.

"Both parties have agreed not to make any defamatory statements about the other"

Joint statement of the parties, as quoted by The New York Times, March 15, 2011

The Times observed that it was "not exactly clear just what has been resolved, beyond a cessation of name calling." The statement also did not say how, or whether, the negatives might ever be authenticated, or whether the Trust's trademark rights would block marketing them as Adams's work if they were.

The countersuit and the university

In January 2011, the Times reported, Norsigian named the University of Arizona's Center for Creative Photography, which houses Adams's archives, as a defendant in his countersuit against the Trust. He claimed the center had conspired against his authentication efforts. He based this on e-mails obtained through a public-records request that showed Turnage, the Trust's managing trustee, had successfully lobbied the archive to issue a statement disputing Norsigian's claims. The university was not mentioned in the settlement announcement and declined to comment.

After the settlement

The pricing changed fast. Months earlier some prints were listed as high as $7,500; by the Tuesday after the settlement, the Times reported, the most expensive print on Norsigian's site appeared to be a limited-edition print at $960, and the site had removed nearly all references to Adams. Norsigian told the Times his efforts to prove the negatives are Adams's work would continue. He declined further comment, as did his lawyer and a lawyer for the Trust.

The dollar figures in the court filings themselves are not in the documents Mr Scandal read, so the only sums on record are the ones above: a $45 purchase, a $200 million appraisal and a confidential settlement.