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Yesterday I videoed Matthew Adams, Ansel’s grandson and the President of the Ansel Adams Gallery, to get his take on the recent hullabalou over a Fresno man claiming he has found long lost negatives of his grandfather’s. Matthew is skeptical that they are the real deal and told me several reasons why this claim is fishy:

1. The handwriting  doesn’t match. The finder has claimed that the handwriting is Matthew’s grandmother Virginia’s, but it doesn’t really match up with hers. He showed me examples her her writing and what was claimed to be hers on the negative sleeves.  Sure enough, key points like the flourish on her letters, and how she capitalized them don’t match.

2. But the even bigger point were misspellings. These were of well known Yosemite landmarks, where she grew up. For example the alleged sample spells “Bridal Vail Falls” instead of the correct spelling of “Veil.” Other examples can be seen in this photo “Monteray” instead of Monterey, “Neveada” instead of Nevada, well, you get the idea. There were at least a half a dozen such examples, attributed to Virginia, a very literate  woman who knew these places well.  This to me was the biggest point that disproved the “find.”

3. Doesn’t match Ansel’s numbering. Ansel had an exact numbering system, which was 2 letters + two digits,  which the alleged negatives don’t follow, as you can see there  are 4 digits on the left. This is not consistent with Ansel’s exact approach to everything he did.

4. No exposure notes. Ansel kept meticulous notes of his exposures (we know them as metadata today) but none exist for these 61 negatives. Again, doesn’t fit.

5. How could Ansel just lose his negatives? After his Yosemite Fire of 1938 where he lost 5,000 negatives, Ansel kept them in a bank vault where he only took them out to print, or later he put them in a fireproof bunker.  How would he then “lose track” of 61 negatives? Again, it doesn’t add up.

Yesterday a woman said that she recognized the prints as being from her “Uncle Earl” in Fresno! She provided them to Scott Nichols a San Francisco art gallery owner and Ansel Adam expert. He took a look at Uncle Earl’s photographs and said the ones purchased at a garage sale held a striking resemblance. He specifically analyzed one of a pine tree on Sentinel Dome and said because of the placement of the camera and the shadows of the tree, he think the slide was taken by Earl Brooks.

There you have it folks, draw your own conclusions, I have. We should have our video up soon, so you can see the details. The final point is that of being poached as an artist, which this rings of. Ansel worked his whole life to produce his caliber of his images and for someone to swoop them up at a garage sale for $45, and then claim they are now worth $200,000,000 strikes pretty hard against an artist’s rights

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