California garage-sale mystery: Junk — or Ansel Adams?

FRESNO, Calif. — Rick Norsigian discovered the object of his obsession one sunny Saturday seven years ago at a garage sale.

A painter for the Fresno school district by day and antiques buff the rest of his waking hours, Norsigian was combing through suburban castoffs when he came across a weathered wooden box. It was heavy with old glass-plate photographic negatives.

Frozen in early 20th-century black and white were sharply detailed shots of Yosemite landmarks, the San Francisco waterfront, Carmel's historic mission and scenic Point Lobos.

Norsigian bought the five dozen negatives for about 75 cents apiece. They were a nice bit of memorabilia, he figured, nothing more.

But over the months that followed, when he pulled the delicate plates out of faded manila envelopes to show friends and relatives, nearly everyone said the same thing: These old glass negatives look like the work of Ansel Adams.

A notion slowly took hold: Perhaps this was a misplaced collection of the photographic legend's early work.

Antiques always have been Norsigian's fixation. But nothing ever hooked him like the glass-plate negatives.

At first, he knew little of Adams, who died in 1984. Suddenly, Norsigian, 60, was boning up on all things Ansel, poring over Adams biographies and photo books.

Adams, who was born in San Francisco in 1902, worked early in his career with 6 1/2-by-8 1/2-inch glass-plate negatives like the ones Norsigian had found. During the 1920s, Adams shot mostly in Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada but also at San Francisco's Baker Beach and in Carmel, spots featured in Norsigian's negatives.

In the photo books, Norsigian found several Adams prints resembling his garage-sale negatives.

Fire clue

Norsigian's most tantalizing discovery was the 1937 blaze that engulfed Adams' Yosemite darkroom, destroying about one-third of his work. Some of the Fresno glass plates, he noticed, seemed scorched.

The man who sold Norsigian the plates in 2000 had told him they came from an abandoned warehouse in Los Angeles. Norsigian learned that Adams had moved briefly to Los Angeles in late 1942 to teach.

He became convinced the negatives had been salvaged after the fire, carted to Southern California and left behind. "These are early Ansel Adams, before he became famous," Norsigian said.

Itching for proof, in spring 2001, he headed to The Ansel Adams Gallery in Yosemite Valley.

On a big table, gallery curator Glenn Crosby and Norsigian spread a dozen photographs printed from the glass plates. Crosby asked his guest: Would you like to talk to Adams' heirs? Norsigian drove home excited, sure the question meant Crosby had seen the same thing he had.

For months, Norsigian waited. In late summer, he received a phone call from Jeanne Adams, wife of Ansel's son, Michael. They wanted to see the negatives.

The couple gazed at each shot, not saying much. Norsigian remembers Michael Adams suggesting the quality seemed similar to Ansel's. Norsigian showed them the wooden box, pulled out a few glass negatives.

The couple asked to see the fraying manila envelopes the plates had been stored in, each one marked with distinctive handwriting. They looked at the writing, then at each other. Finally, Jeanne Adams turned to Norsigian. This isn't Ansel's handwriting, she told him. His was much smaller.

Norsigian wanted a second opinion. There were other experts.

Norsigian sent his prints to Mary Street Alinder, an Adams biographer and his assistant in the final years before his death. Alinder's book had become his Adams bible. If anyone had answers, Norsigian figured, she would.

Alinder wrote back in April 2002 to say she was baffled. The size and apparent fire damage "seem to indicate they might be Ansel's," Alinder wrote. Although some images looked like the work of Adams, "some do not," Alinder said. "The handwriting just complicates matters."

She thought the writing on the envelopes might belong to Virginia Adams, Ansel's wife.

The possibility was enough to keep Norsigian going. He kept searching for an Adams expert with a different point of view and found one.

Jonathan Spaulding, another Adams biographer, was at the time an associate curator with the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. In September 2003, Norsigian drove to Southern California.

Spaulding said the print of a park ranger standing atop Diving Board Rock at Glacier Point looked like Ansel Hall, a pioneering Yosemite naturalist who befriended Adams in the early 1920s. Spaulding said the car in front of the Carmel mission in another shot might be the 1926 Buick owned by Albert Bender, an Adams benefactor known to take road trips with the photographer.

None of the negatives approached Adams' best work, Spaulding said, but in the early 1920s, the photographer had not developed the mature style of decades to come.

Norsigian learned that Hall, the ranger, had a daughter living in Colorado. He called her. Merrie Winkler and her husband, William, recalled that Hall, who died in 1962, had vivid memories of the young Adams from the early 1920s.

After the photo arrived in the mail, the couple peered through a magnifying lens at the ranger on the rock. They wrote back in December 2003. There was no doubt, they said. It was Hall.

With that, any uncertainty left in Norsigian evaporated. He rented a safe-deposit box for the glass plates. He knew anything related to Adams was valuable. A print of "Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico" recently sold for $609,600.

Suspicions sprout

By 2004, Norsigian began to wonder if his authentication attempts were being stymied by photographic scholars' fear of upsetting the Adams estate.

The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust closely guards the reproduction and exhibition of the photographer's work. In March 2004, William Turnage, the trustee who propelled Adams to financial success, dismissed any interest in Norsigian's negatives, warning the trust "owns all rights to Ansel's name and likeness" and any unauthorized use would be referred to attorneys.

Norsigian then asked Alinder to vouch for his negatives. But repeated e-mails went unanswered.

In 2005, he sent some prints to the Smithsonian Institution. The museum's photo archivists seemed enthusiastic in a phone conversation but less so in a letter, simply wishing him luck.

More recently, Norsigian's negatives found the lap of an aging aide-de-camp of Adams. Rondal Partridge, 89, has a storied career of his own: son of photo pioneer Imogen Cunningham, apprentice to the legendary Dorothea Lange, late-1930s lab assistant to Adams.

Partridge was there in 1937, when Adams' Yosemite darkroom went up in flames. "I don't remember any glass negatives, but there might have been," he said.

Adams in those days was "a bit of a genius and a bit of a nut," Partridge said. But nobody, he said, "has ever reached the level of photographic technique that Ansel did."

Norsigian's negatives don't approach that skill, Partridge said as he flipped through the prints in his home. "These are not compositions Ansel would have made," he concluded. "I'm 99 percent certain." He shrugged. "This is a real mystery."

Adams' heirs don't want any part of the puzzle. Jeanne and Michael Adams declined to comment. Their son, Matthew, president of the Ansel Adams Gallery, said the family wishes Norsigian would take no for an answer.

"We've looked at them, and they're not Ansel Adams' negatives," Matthew Adams said. "I've heard some people build greenhouses out of glass-plate negatives. Maybe that ought to be considered in this case."