Team Norsigian Accentuates the Negative (12)

Frank Schlegel, portrait of Patrick Alt, n.d.

On October 6 I published a Guest Post by California photographer Patrick Alt, a member of Team Norsigian, sent in rebuttal to comments I’ve made at this blog about him and his contributions to Team Norsigian’s project. I also approved for publication here a lengthy comment by a supporter of his, one Jeff Schneider, who compares me unflatteringly to (among other things) a “closeted homosexual evangelist.” In several subsequent posts I responded to Schneider’s diatribe (for which I don’t hold Alt responsible), and to Schneider’s and Alt’s incorrect assumptions about my knowledge base and range of contacts in the photography community.

Herewith my response to a far more important issue, Alt’s argument on his own behalf as a “photography expert” qualified to authenticate 65 anonymous glass-plate negatives as “Absolutely, unquestionably, . . . original Ansel Adams negatives . . . one of the most significant finds in photography in the last 100 years.”

A few reminders, to begin with:

Earl Brooks. Detail of photo by Graham Hughes.

• To date, I’ve neither endorsed the “Uncle” Earl Brooks Theory, which holds that commercial studio photographer Earl Brooks made these negatives, nor rejected the possibility that Ansel Adams made them. I continue to reserve judgment on both counts. So far as I know, excepting Team Norsigian’s own members, no one else with any credibility in the fields of photography history and art/photography authentication has publicly subscribed to their hypothesis that Adams made these images. Indeed, aside from myself I know of no one else in the field still publicly keeping an open mind on the matter.

• I have, on the other hand, rejected an offer from Team Norsigian to become a member of their research squad, on the grounds that I have no specific expertise pertinent to the forensic inquiry that, alone, will establish — to the extent possible — the authorship of these negatives.

"Photography Expert" Patrick Alt's website.

Staying out of it is a course of action I’d have recommended to Patrick Alt before all this began. Now, of course, he’s in it up to his neck, and has been for close to a year. As far back as November 2009, Alt publicly authenticated these negatives as the work of Adams. “‘My conclusion is unequivocal: Yes, these are Ansel Adams photographs. There is no question in my mind,’ Alt said. ‘When I saw the proofs . . . his style was so distinct, you could just feel him in the room. . . . This is a totally unique find in the history of photography. . . . This illuminates a very important part of his evolution as an artist because this is the work that he did in his 20s. He had images that didn’t fit in anywhere, that show he is trying to discover his voice, to fully realized Ansel Adams masterpieces.” (See Sue Doyle’s report, “Man’s $45 garage-sale find thought to be original Ansel Adams works,” in the November 8, 2009 Los Angeles Daily News.)

In other words, it’s definitely Adams’s work, but at best an assortment of Adams’s juvenilia — of which thousands of examples survived the 1937 Yosemite studio fire. How, even if authenticated, this “find” of a trivial number of additional examples “illuminates a very important part of his evolution as an artist” in any new way beats me, and still awaits explanation by Alt and other members of Team Norsigian.

"Three Brothers with Morning Clouds." Image courtesy of Rick Norsigian.

That’s Alt in November 2009. But Alt misrepresents his relationship to this project when he writes, “I was to do my report from a technical basis only to add to what Bob Moeller [Robert C. Moeller III, Team Norsigian’s “art expert”] was able to find out” and “I finished my 14 page report, turned it in, and that was my last contact with the team.” I’ve read that report in full (Alt kindly provided me with a copy, which I’ve posted here), and it goes well beyond technical analysis, into hypothetical narratives about how the negatives got to southern California, how Adams employed them in his classes, and much more — almost all of it sheer, baseless speculation. And it concludes with Alt’s decisive opinions regarding the authorship of these negatives. (Sections of this document appear in Team Norsigian’s “Final Report of Investigative Team,” titled “The Lost Negatives of Ansel Adams.”)

Additionally, Alt seems to have participated in the July 27, 2010 press conference held by Team Norsigian — at least he’s quoted widely in reports on that conference, and appears in a concurrently released Team Norsigian video, saying, “Absolutely, unquestionably, they are original Ansel Adams negatives. It’s one of the most significant finds in photography in the last 100 years. It’s a huge, huge discovery.” That’s not anything resembling technical analysis, by any stretch of the imagination. It’s another unequivocal, full-tilt-boogie act of authentication and opinionation.

(Note: This video has vanished mysteriously from the Norsigian website, where it was featured from July 30 until recently. Nor is it the only related document to evaporate. Team Norsigian’s August 15 press release about Irving Schwartz, the Fresno man from whom Norsigian claims to have purchased the negatives, no longer appears on their site’s chronological list of media releases, though you can still access it via the link above.)

Alt’s “unequivocal” initial position, firmly asserted in November ’09 and reaffirmed in July 2010, got rendered comical, and trivialized, by his subsequent assertion that, as he told the Los Angeles Times, “he would not be upset if the negatives prove to have been taken by a previously unknown photographer, Earl Brooks, whose niece in Oakland recently came forward with old prints that two former Adams assistants say are matches for three pictures in Norsigian’s trove. ‘If it was Uncle Earl, fine,’ Alt said. ‘Then we have a new photographer who was doing some quite excellent work, and we add him to the history of California photography.'” (See Mike Boehm’s Aug. 12 story, “Negatives ‘authenticated’ as Ansel Adams’ work — but by whom?”) So this “photography expert” wouldn’t be upset if he turned out to have made forcefully a completely erroneous attribution. As I wrote in response to that statement, “In other words, it’s all good. How very southern Californian.”

Now Alt tells us that he’s retrenched even further. In the very same Guest Post in which he protests my challenge to his qualifications as a “photography expert” competent to legitimate these negatives as the output of Ansel Adams, he writes, “As to the current status of my stance on the Norsigian plates, after hearing the opinion of my old friend John Sexton, who is convinced they are not by Ansel, I am now leaning toward that as well. I trust John’s integrity and his long history with Ansel and if it is good enough for John, I think I should follow his lead.”

It appears that while there were no questions in Alt’s mind about Adams’s creation of these negatives a year ago, such questions have belatedly entered said mind. What happened to Ansel Adams’s style in these photographs avowedly being “so distinct, you could just feel him in the room”? Not even an “Oops”? Like Gilda Radner’s Emily Litella, Alt has seemingly persuaded himself that he can switch sides in this situation without admitting that his previous statements were erroneous, unfounded, and misleading.

Robert C. Moeller III's website.

Robert C. Moeller III, who issued a more guarded confirmation of Adams’s presumed authorship of these negatives in July 2010, knows as little about photography today as he did two years ago, and still has no business opining about the attribution of any negatives. To his credit, however, he’s had the integrity and courage to come out and state forthrightly that he was wrong, instead of weaseling around and laying off a change of heart on the persuasiveness of a more knowledgeable friend. Being a “photography expert” à la Patrick Alt, I gather, means never having to say you’re sorry.

Arnold Peter, Esq.

Be that as it may, this recantation by Alt will surely not come as heartening news to attorney Arnold Peter, designated quarterback of Team Norsigian. Moeller, the team’s “art expert,” bailed out a month ago, officially rescinding his attribution of the negatives to Adams and allying himself to those who attribute them to “Uncle” Earl Brooks. Now comes Alt, who hasn’t exactly bailed yet but clearly has his hand on the ripcord. (Arnold Peter asserted, in a public comment on July 17, that “on our team was Mr. Patrick Alt who I had the pleasure to work with and learn from. His expertise in this area is beyond reproach.” The recantation of an expert with supposed credentials “beyond reproach” surely does serious damage to Peter’s case, as Peter would be forced to admit if he acknowledged Alt’s surprising reversal — which he has yet to do.)

"DWS and Sly Stallone May 15, 2008," from Streets's Facebook album.

Moreover, this leaves Team Norsigian with no one on board holding even questionable credentials in the authentication of works of art and photography. I’m assuming Peter doesn’t intend to send in convicted felon and self-styled Beverly Hills art appraiser David W. Streets to fill that gaping hole in the lineup. Streets’ laughable estimate of $200 million as the value of these negatives took this story international. Alt’s response thereto — “It’s the biggest bunch of crap I’ve heard in my life” — foreshadowed his gradual abandonment of support for this project.

Alt states in his Guest Post that “Bob Moeller brought an incredible research aesthetic to the project.” I’ve no idea what constitutes “an incredible research aesthetic” in the opinion of Alt, or even what such a mindset might represent. (What exactly is a “research aesthetic,” anyway?) I do know, from his professional history, that Moeller has not a shred of curatorial or research grounding in photography, yet his “incredible research aesthetic” hasn’t prevented him from offering opinions on that subject.

To give him his due, I have to point out that Moeller’s initial attribution of these negatives to Adams was more restrained and guarded than Alt’s. (See Team Norsigian’s “Final Report of Investigative Team” for excerpts from Moeller’s opinion.) And, as just noted, Moeller has since fully revoked his original position, switching over to the side of those who assert that “Uncle” Earl Brooks produced at least some of these negatives — a judgment no less questionable, given his well-established lack of knowledge of photography.

Moeller’s “incredible research aesthetic,” whatever it is, self-evidently has not served either himself or Team Norsigian at all well, so it surprises me to find Alt trotting it out here and praising it as some sort of model, instead of disassociating himself from it — surely the wiser course to pursue when the person to whom you’re referring has his foot in his mouth and his head where the sun don’t shine. Alt’s continuing expression of admiration for Moeller’s incompetent and self-impeached scholarship doesn’t reflect at all well on his own capacity for research that meets professional standards.

(To be continued.)

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For an index of links to all previous posts related to this story, click here.