Turn $ 45 into a $ 200 million with Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams would be happy to see the return on investment that happens. Rick Norsigian found a couple of dusty old boxes of glass negatives at a garage sale and bought them for a song. After 10 years of persistence, he has finally certain some experts that the photos were taken by famous photographer Ansel Adams. Now he hopes to get the return on his $ 45 investment. All the photos are being appraised for more than $ 200 million now.

Ansel Adams garage sale photographs

Photographer Ansel Adams, who died in 1984, was renowned for his black-and-white photographs of the American West. Some of probably the most famous by Ansel Adams are pictures which were taken in Yosemite National Park in California. Norsigian told CNN that he bought two boxes of glass negatives for $ 45 although the sellers wanted $ 70 for them. Robert Moeller who’s an art expert concluded that “with a high degree of probability, the images under consideration were produced by Ansel Adams,” reports CNN.

’Missing link’ in Ansel Adams life is what these pictures are

In the photographer’s career, these photos appear to be a “missing link” reports CNN who was told by David W. Streets, art dealer. The Beverly Hills gallery had the photos shown for the very first time July 27. He also thinks the return on his investment could possibly be at least $ 200 million. Evidently 65 glass negatives made it out of the 1937 darkroom fire that destroyed 5,000 different plates in it.

Zone system set up by Ansel Adams

The photos had to be taken between 1919 and the 1930s considering the silver tarnishing on the Ansel Adams photos, and that was way before the Yosemite pictures become famous within the 1940s. A Wikipedia page on Adams reports that he co-developed a way to determine proper exposure and adjust the contrast of the final print, and he called it the Zone System. This is what determines the main difference between Ansel Adams photos and other photos. Adams wanted sharpness in his images so he used expensive high-resolution large-format cameras.

Negatives on Ansel Adams discovery

Many experts still aren’t too certain about accepting the Ansel Adams photos as real. The blog, Croanca, wonders if the dealers in the CNN article are actually qualified to say this is Ansel Adams photos. Admirers of Ansel Adams worry about adequate reproduction of the plates. A commenter at visualjournalism.info wonders whether anyone today can print the Ansel Adams negatives in a way that does them justice.

More on this topic

CNN
cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/07/27/ansel.adams.discovery/?hpt=Sbin
Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansel_Adams