Lawyer: Negatives verified as Adams’ work

July 28, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif.

A trove of old glass negatives bought at a garage sale for $45 has been authenticated as the lost work of famed nature photographer Ansel Adams and is worth at least $200 million, an attorney for the owner said Tuesday.

A team of experts concluded after an exhaustive, six-month examination that the 65 negatives are Adams’ early work, which were believed to have been destroyed in a 1937 fire at his Yosemite National Park studio, Arnold Peter said.

“These photographs are really the missing link,” he said. “They fill the void in Ansel Adams’ early career.”

Adams is best known for his striking black-and-white photographs, mainly landscapes, of the American West. He died in 1984 at 82.

Rick Norsigian, a construction worker and painter, said he bought the negatives 10 years ago at a Fresno garage sale after bargaining down the seller to $45.

“When I heard that $200 million [figure], I got a little weak,” he told a news conference.

Norsigian said he bought the negatives because they contained views of Yosemite but never suspected they might be from Adams, whose images of the Sierra Nevada national park are world famous.

“It took a while, close to two years,” before his suspicions were aroused, Norsigian said.

He stored the negatives in a bank vault and hired Peter three years ago to authenticate them.

Peter said two handwriting experts concluded that writing on manila envelopes holding the negatives was that of Adams’ wife, Virginia.

He also said a meteorologist studied the cloud formation, snowdrift and shadows on one image and compared it with a similar photograph by Adams, concluding they were taken at the same location on the same day.

Norsigian said the man who sold him the negatives said he bought them in the 1940s from a salvage warehouse in Los Angeles.

Art appraiser David W. Streets said he conservatively estimated the negatives’ value at $200 million, based on current sales of Adams’ prints and the potential for selling reproductions.