Flea market find valued $200M, in final is worth "a lot less"

By constantly haunting the flea market fairs, every bargain hunter dreams of making the find of his life, but big hits are rare, like the Lotto draw offering the supreme gain and once a find has been made, it is advisable to l 'authenticate, which can take years.

© Alan Ross

About ten years ago, Rick Norsigian, an American artist bargain hunter at heart, had found for the modest sum of 45 dollars 65 negatives on glass plates in a garage sale in Fresno, a city located 260 km to the south. of San Francisco. Curious to know what he had come across, he had developed the photographs by noting that they presented an astonishing similarity with those of the famous photographer Ansel Easton Adams (1902-1984). Anselm Adams's black and white photographs of the American West, especially from Yosemite National Park in the Sierra Nevada mountains, are worth fortunes today.

Norsigian strove to prove that these negatives had indeed been produced by Adams, since 5,000 negatives had disappeared in 1937 in the fire in his darkroom.

He contacted several specialists in 20th century American photography when a graphologist managed to determine that the writing on the envelopes in which the negatives were placed was that of the photographer's wife, a clue proving their origin. .

Furthermore, one of the negatives was similar to a photograph of a landscape taken on a certain date by Adams. In the end, Norsigian was able to have them authenticate his fabulous find only to find himself in possession of a jackpot worth at least $ 200 million.

Presented in David Streets' gallery in Beverly Hills on July 27, 2010, these photos revealed superb compositions by Ansel Adams, one of his most famous photographs entitled " Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico" is a must for any serious collector.

The day after David Street's presentation of these shots Matthew Adams, the photographer's grandson, began to question the credibility of the experts who had examined them. In collaboration with Fred Archer, Adams developed the Zone System, a process for determining the correct exposure and adjusting the contrast on the final print. The resulting depth and clarity were his hallmark and those he taught his technique. The happy Norsigian will be able to boast of having concretized the coup of the century which would make him the undisputed King of bargain-hunters if Adams heirs were convinced of his discovery.

To make matters worse, The New York Times revealed that David Streets had previously been charged with fraud and theft in the late 1990s in Louisiana and Kentucky.The Times revealed also that some of his former associates believed he had a real talent to embellish his CV and deceive his world, not to mention that the value he gave to the pictures found by Norsigian was beyond comprehension.

It is still happening that David Streets tried to pass himself off as a great merchant claiming to count former President Bill Clinton or Maria Shriver, the wife of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California, among his clients, but now a certain Mrs. Walton s 'is shown to say that these photos were taken by her uncle Earl Brooks, an amateur photographer who worked in the 1930s.

The 87-year-old girl was watching a TV reportage devoted to the discovery of Norsigian, noting that one of the pictures shown on the screen was similar to the photograph of her uncle that she had in her bathroom.

Therefore, this dear uncle Earl Brooks would have been as talented as Ansel Adams, with the difference that he remained unknown and that his pictures are not worth a penny on the market. However, Scott Nichols, a gallery owner in San Francisco, has announced that he will show his photographs during an exhibition of photos of Adams and his assistants scheduled for next November to bring him out of his anonymity.

In the meantime, Streets has not shied away from marketing prints of the photos and sold them for $ 1,500 up to $ 7,500 each.

It is clear that controversies over astonishing discoveries are commonplace. This was verified recently with a painting found in the Vatican first given as being an authentic Caravaggio before being cataloged as the work of one of his followers while a damaged canvas which was sleeping in a room in the basement of Yale University was authenticated in early July as a youthful work by the 17th century Spanish painter. This time, contrary to the discovery of the photos attributed to the famous photographer Ansel Adams, there was no dispute about this beautiful discovery.

read in le Journal d'un Fou d'art - Adrian Darmon