7/27/2010, CNN: Announcement by purchaser Norsigian and representatives.

From the comments:

" A vintage print of an iconic Adams image can bring over a hundred thousand dollars, but it has to a good example, made at a certain time, and bear his signature. These are only negatives which do not bear his signature. If prints were to be made from them, they would not be Adam's interpretation or bear his signature. Adams himself said "the negative is the score, the print is the performance"."

...

This one was heard round the globe that year.  I never heard about the debunking/rival claim of Brooks until now...

This is on some Michelangelo ishhhhh... all the links make for exciting reads

7/29/2010, CNN: The criticism by the grandson, and manager trustee, of the announcement:

Adams' grandson is also unconvinced. Matthew Adams, who runs the Ansel Adams Gallery, said even if they are authenticated, they are not worth much beyond their historical value.

The art dealer who placed their eventual value at more than $200 million said Wednesday that the controversy is increasing their value by "driving the market to them."

...

William Turnage, the managing trustee of Adams' trust, called Norsigian and those working with him "a bunch of crooks" who "are pulling a big con job."

...

"I have sent people to prison for the rest of their lives for far less evidence than I have seen in this case," said evidence and burden-of-proof expert Manny Medrano, who was hired by Norsigian to help authenticate the plates. "In my view, those photographs were done by Ansel Adams."

Meanwhile, Matthew Adams said Wednesday, "I don't think that they've proven that they are (authentic). ... And I don't know that you could ever prove that they are."

...

Even if Norsigian's glass plates are authentic Ansel Adams photographs, they would have mostly historical value, "not anywhere near" the $200 million estimate given by Streets, Adams said.

Streets said his estimate was based on decades of print sales and rights fees. "There will always be a demand for Ansel Adams' work," he said. "The long-term potential is very easy to prove for these."

"You can't print original photographs from them because Ansel's not around to print them," Matthew Adams said. "Anything you make from them you would have to say is an unknown interpretation of something that may be Ansel's."

The Ansel Adams Gallery is still producing prints, but with a printer who was trained by Adams. The iconic artist died in 1984 at the age of 82.

"A lot of the magic that he created was in the darkroom making the print," his grandson said. "Ansel's not around to tell us how he would have printed it."

Streets countered Adams, saying, "It's not a mysterious process."

"There are master printmakers who are making prints today," he said.

7/29/2010, LATimes: On the Copyright Law in the case, no matter who is right:

According to Iser, simply owning a reproducible artifact, such as a photographic negative, a recording artist's master tape or the original manuscript of a novel, doesn't give that object's owner any rights to make copies and sell them. The copyright -- and the earnings that flow from it -- belongs to the artist and his or her estate.

For how long? In the case of a previously unpublished work such as the disputed negatives, which Norsigian published a few days ago when he began selling them, Iser says the artist's heirs retain the copyright for 70 years after the artist's death. In the case of Adams, who died in 1984, that would be until 2054.

If the photos are proven to be by Adams, Iser said, Norsigian "would need a license or permission from the estate of Ansel Adams to reproduce the photographs. Ownership of the master does not mean you own copyright."

But in order to make a claim on Norsigian's earnings from the prints, or to stop their sale, Iser said, Adams' estate would have to first agree with Norsigian that the 17 pictures he has published so far, out of a cache of 65, are authentic works by Ansel Adams.

...

7/28/2010, Techdirt:

from all of the indications, none of these works were "published," and as the handy dandy public domain tracker notifies us, unpublished works are given a copyright of "life of the author +70 years." Ansel Adams died in 1984, so it would appear that the copyright on the images would likely belong to his heirs, and will last until 2054. 

The most likely scenario remains the first one, which would suggest Norsigian might actually get into legal trouble for making prints. And, in fact, the managing director of the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust, Bill Turnage, first says that Norsigian's claims are a "fraud" and he's actually considering suing over Norsigian's use of Ansel Adams' name for commercial purposes (the article claims "copyrighted name," but I believe the AP reporter gets that wrong -- at best there may be a publicity rights claim under California state law). Of course, that puts another twist on the situation as well.

7/31/2010, NPR : Recap of the unfolding dispute:

But establishing whether these negatives are authentic is anything but black and white. Andy Grunberg chairs the photography department at the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, D.C. He used to be the director of the Ansel Adams Center for Photography in San Francisco.

"It's harder in photography than it is in painting, because [in] painting there are experts who examine particular artist's paintings down to the brushstroke to the kind of pigments that they used," Grunberg says. "In photography, you have to use more circumstantial evidence."

...

"First of all let me be very clear, I'm agnostic as to who took the photographs. All I'm doing is printing them," says photographer Jesse Kalisher who was commissioned to make the prints from Norsigian's negatives. Kalisher's work is in some major galleries, including Smithsonian museums and the Louvre. Kalisher is kind of the man in the middle; he says he's already gotten some angry e-mails from Ansel Adams fans.

"They were titled things like, 'Shame on you,'" he says. They "took me to the woodshed in typically rude terms."

Kalisher is quick to admit that what he produces will not be Ansel Adams prints. Adams was a master in the darkroom. His art was as much the printing process as taking the picture. Still, Kalisher is thrilled to be working with these images.

8/8/2010, LA Times: Earl Brooks emerges as potential original artist, debunking announced claim:

"Oh my gosh," Walton thought to herself. "That's Uncle Earl's picture!" She didn't even have to get out of her chair to make the comparison -- it was hanging on the bathroom wall, in clear view from where she sat, she said in a recent interview.

Walton called the TV station, KTVU, and the next day, after her weekly tennis game, she got a visit from a reporter and Scott Nichols, owner of a San Francisco photo gallery that did a considerable business in Ansel Adams prints. Nichols took the Jeffrey pine picture and three other Yosemite shots from Uncle Earl that Walton had kept in a drawer. 

KTVU did a story on Walton's picture, with Nichols saying there was only a minute difference between it and the one on Norisigian's website, which the Fresno school district employee had posted as one of 17 images he'd begun selling for $7,500 for a hand-made print, $1,500 for a digital one and $45 for a poster.

Nichols told The Times last week that the slight differences in the tree's shadow and the clouds behind it were probably caused by a short time lapse between the taking of each picture. Everything else -- the focus, brightness and angle, were the same. It was the best evidence yet, he said, of what he and other dealers, as well as Adams' family and professional circle of former assistants already had concluded: that Norsigian's negatives had been shot by somebody other than America's greatest nature photographer.

8/30/2010, NYTimes: Reversal/Recanting by one of Norsigian's experts

“It didn’t take me long to say they were same camera, same time, same man,” Mr. Moeller said in an interview. “My report, which said there was a high probability that Ansel Adams took the photos, has got to change.”

...

Mr. Moeller took on the consulting job regarding the negatives in June 2009, he said, because he wanted to “solve a puzzle.” During his investigation he found that the quality of some of Mr. Norsigian’s negatives approached that of Adams’s work, but not all.

“The lowest level of quality of Ansel Adams is well above the lowest level of Norsigian’s images,” Mr. Moeller said.

So why did he issue such a definitive statement that Adams was the photographer? “Maybe I kind of wanted them to be Ansel Adams,” he said.

1/26/2011, PDN: Slander Lawsuit Reveals rift between Adams Camp and CCP:

On December 15, Norsigian counter-sued Turnage and the Ansel Adams Trust for slander, unfair competition, trade libel, and conspiracy. In the lawsuit, Norsigian alleges that Turnage described him and his associates as  "crooks" and "con men" to CNN, called their work "a big lie," and allegedly compared it to propaganda techniques used in Nazi Germany by Adolf Hitler."

The Trust...sought to derive a direct competitive advantage by intentionally and maliciously disparaging  [Norsigian's] efforts to authenticate, appraise, and sell the glass plate negatives and prints developed therefrom," Norsigian says in his claim.

The e-mails between Turnage and the CCP form the basis of Norsigian's conspiracy claim against the Turnage and the Trust. Norsigian obtained the e-mails through a Freedom of Information Request, according to Turnage, who explained that the University of Arizona was obligated to honor the request because it is a state-run institution.

By the end of August--two weeks after Turnage threatened to cut of support for the CCP and more than a month after the story about the found images broke--the CCP posted a statement on its web site saying "We have no reason to believe that these negatives are, in fact, the work of Ansel Adams, and we support the efforts of the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust to protect its rights in this matter."

"Ansel interpreted the negative very heavily. He believed the negative was like a musical score. No two composers will interpret it the same way," he said. "Each print is a work of art."

2013, RF Forums: Useful comments regarding Print vs Negative:

"A print is, if made or signed off by the photographer, how he wanted the world to see his creation, the negative tells the story of the journey to get that print and any cropping and post treatment allows us to see a scene put in actual visualisation."

"For historical/documentary purpose, I would say both because they give a more complete picture of how that print came about. For that matter, I would also include other shots took of the same scene that are not used, so all together show the artist's thought process and flow."