LOS ANGELES – Rick Norsigian, the school maintenance worker who claims to have purchased 65 glass negatives created by photographer Ansel Adams at a garage sale 10 years ago, has returned to the spotlight, after a team of photography experts that he hired authenticated the works and pricing them at a hefty $200 million. Descendants of Adams, however, are not as confident about the find, telling press that the images of Yosemite and other national parks don’t look like the master’s work.

Norsigian has teamed with a Beverly Hills gallery — and, perhaps smartly, a law firm — to market prints from the negatives at relatively affordable prices. Darkroom prints are going for $7,500, digital productions are set at $1,500, and posters are selling for $45, the same price that the entrepreneur paid for all the negatives at the garage sale. Despite the formidable estimate placed on the value of those works, Norsigian says that he has no plans to sell the collection.

Bill Turnage, who worked as Adams’s manager for the last 12 years of the photographer’s life and administers the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust, told the Wall Street Journal, "Do you have any idea how many people were photographing Yosemite in the 1920s and 1930s? Millions! It could be anyone." Much of Adams’s work from that time period was destroyed in a 1937 studio fire, making these images especially important, if they are accepted as authentic.

Frida Kahlo has also been the subject of posthumous authentication claims in recent years, but Turnage notes that authenticating photographs involves one component that makes it easier to handle that other mediums: if negatives weren’t used by Adams during his life, prints can’t be considered his work. "The negatives aren't worth anything, even the 44,000 at the University of Arizona, because Ansel isn't around to print from them," Turnage said.

Comments Love Stewart Thursday, July 29, 2010   04:02:59 a.m. Awesome for the guy that found it. Admittedly, I hoped that f I sell something that turns out to be millions, the person who bought it from me will come back and write me a check for $1000. Ansel Adams would be happy to see the return on investment that happens. Rick Norsigian found a few dusty old boxes of glass negatives at a garage sale and bought them for a song. It took him 10 years but he’s finally convinced experts that the pictures were taken by Ansel Adams, photographer. Now he's poised to reap a crazy return on his $45 investment. The Ansel Adams garage sale photos are now being appraised for more than $200 million. To Post Comments please login or register. E-mail: Password: Forgot Password?