On Team Norsigian’s “Report on Earl Brooks” (2)
Here are more of the problems I have with Team Norsigian’s “Report on Earl Brooks,” released on October 8, 2010. The passages in italics represent quotes from the report:
Earl Brooks. Detail of photo by Graham Hughes.
• “In order for [Brooks] to have made these negatives in the same size as Ansel Adams, and at a time when few photographers were using glass negatives, Earl Brooks would have had to have a high level of skill and expertise in exposing and developing large format glass plates. . . . [T]here is no evidence that Brooks received training (formal or practical) in the creation and processing of glass negatives or worked with anyone who had such a level of expertise. . . . Exposing and developing large-format glass plates requires a skill level that would have been remarkable for even a serious commercial photographer of that time period. . . . Those who steadfastly espouse the Uncle Earl theory have not offered a shred of evidence to corroborate that Brooks was trained or ever worked with glass negatives. . . . The Absence Of Any Glass Negatives Directly Linked To Earl Brooks Tends to Show That Brooks Did Not Have The Requisite Skills To Create The Norsigian Negatives.”
Glass-plate negative, courtesy Wikimedia.
More uninformed nonsense. Fragility aside, exposure, development, and printing of commercially produced glass-plate negatives such as those in the Norsigian Collection are not significantly more difficult than, nor indeed much different from, the processing and printing of similarly sized commercially produced sheet film. Any competent studio photographer of the period had the tools, materials, darkroom setup, and skills necessary to generate and process such negatives. The one portrait we have so far of Earl Brooks shows him before a large-format view camera, presumably one he used in his studio practice; from this evidence, it’s reasonable to infer that he knew how to handle any negatives he made with it. (Peter & Co., in their ignorance of basic issues of photography, may have confused such glass-plate negatives with wet-collodion negatives, which would indeed require unusual skills to expose and develop. But wet-plate collodion as a medium had become obsolete circa 1900 — replaced consecutively by dry collodion plates, then by dry silver-halide plates — decades before anyone claims these negatives were produced.)
Walton print, left; Norsigian negative, right.
• “Brooks’ attributed body of work does not exhibit the caliber of skill and detail that would have been required to create the images in the Norsigian Collection.” The reference here is to an 81-image cluster of portraits, theater stills, and industrial interiors by Brooks, presently in the collection of the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, DE. Team Norsigian uses a quote from a prior post of mine to justify this assertion: “[T]he Brooks images in the Hagley archive constitute a mix of studio portraits, theater stills, and factory interiors: competently made and utterly conventional, typical — like his landscapes — of an unexceptional journeyman photographer of the period.” The quote is accurate, but you have to misread it drastically to construe it as proposing that production of the California landscapes required a different “caliber of skill and detail” (whatever that means) than the commercial work in the Hagley Library’s collection. To the contrary, my statement proposes that all these works, including the landscapes (if his), are “typical . . . of an unexceptional journeyman photographer of the period.” Moreover, the report’s mention that “Brooks also apparently served as an official photographer for the [Philadelphia] Sesquicentennial International Exposition of 1926” suggests that he was not only technically competent but quite versatile, as such a professional commission would most likely entail the production of other kinds of images than those he made his stock in trade at his Delaware studio.
Robert C. Moeller III's website.
• Team Norsigian published this “Report on Earl Brooks” on October 8. It willfully ignores the fact that, on August 30, the team’s “art expert,” Robert C. Moeller III, switched sides, publicly announcing his endorsement of the “Uncle” Earl Theory. “I made a mistake,” said Mr. Moeller. (See Reyhan Harmanci’s August 30 New York Times story, “A Turnaround in Ansel Adams Photo Dispute.”) It also willfully ignores the fact that, on October 6, the team’s “photography expert,” Patrick Alt, publicly announced his inclination to abandon the Ansel Adams Theory he’d enthusiastically helped Team Norsigian to promote (without, I should add, endorsing the “Uncle” Earl Theory). That’s simply dishonest.
Top to bottom: Peter Arnold, Esq., Barbara M. Rubin, Esq., and Jody Simon, Esq., of PRS Media Partners, LLC.
The true “red herring” here, then, is Team Norsigian’s “Report on Earl Brooks” itself — clearly intended to suggest that Team Norsigian energetically pursues all leads, in order to distract us from the fact that they continue to refuse to conduct forensic testing of the negatives, refuse to bring a qualified photo researcher on board, and refuse to take the “Norsigian Collection” to Tucson for direct comparison with Adams materials from the same period. As they say in the press release accompanying the “Report on Earl Brooks,” “proper authentication is the key to this mystery.” The ball’s in their court insofar as initiating such authentication goes. But they’d sooner save the appearances by rushing about looking busy with unnecessary made work like this pointless report on Brooks.
Rick Norsigian, Arnold Peter, and the rest of their posse can run from that truth. But they can’t hide from it any longer.
•
Reportedly, we can expect more material relevant to Brooks to emerge shortly, courtesy of his granddaughter, Brook Delarco, who promised same in an extensive Comment posted here on October 15. (Scroll down to the Comments area for this.) From what she indicates, photo albums, writings, and other Brooks documentation exists to verify his photographic trips to Yosemite. We’ll have to wait and see if this provides any confirmation of Brooks’s production of the Walton prints.
Meanwhile, consider the two following images, extracted from a New York Times article by PI reader Richard Kuzniak and juxtaposed by him for easy comparison. On the left you’ll see one of the four Walton prints that she inherited from her uncle Earl Brooks. On the right, a positive derived from a Norsigian negative. (Kuzniak notes, “The red check marks are what I perceive to be damaged areas of the Norsigian neg.” Click on the image to view a larger version.)
It seems highly probable to me that the print reproduced on the left was made from the negative represented on the right, back when said negative was in its pristine state. If that’s the case, then we can anticipate the following:
• Team Norsigian continues to insist that all the Norsigian Collection negatives came from the hand, eye, and camera of Ansel Adams.
• If so, then any vintage print therefrom would necessarily be an original Ansel Adams print.
• Scott Nichols, proprietor of the eponymous San Francisco Gallery, has studied the four prints in the possession of Earl Brooks’s niece, Marian Walton, and has asserted that they’re authentic vintage prints.
• If one or more of Walton’s prints matches a Norsigian negative, as several appear to do, then Walton, de facto, owns an original Ansel Adams vintage print or two, which Team Norsigian’s crack team of “experts” must logically certify as such — even though this print bears none of Adams’s standard identifying markings for his prints.
I hear hoofbeats . . . and here comes Arnold Peter, astride his white horse, riding in once again to save the appearances!
•
For an index of links to all previous posts related to this story, click here.
“White” horse? Check for spray-paint. Just like “fire damage.”
I’m afraid it gives truly white horses a bad rap. Or any horse, for that matter.
Though I think this is drawing to a close, which I deeply regret, keep up the good work!
The Norsigian report on Brooks is embarrassing, amateurish, disingenuous and pathetic in its attempt to make hay with straw men and go fishing with red herring as bait. I think you may be right that they are confusing glass plate with wet plate. The fact that they COULD confuse the two processes speaks volumes.
The identical match (and I agree with your astute reader Richard that it IS identical) poses the following questions. Why is the ONLY extant confirmed print of one of Ansel’s lost negatives in the possession of the Brooks family? Why are the only extant prints of 3 other and still lost (!) of Ansel’s negatives in the Brooks family? Where are Ansel’s exact (not Earl’s similar) prints of the three negatives? How did the Brooks’ get the 4 prints?
If Team N can accept Earl Brooks being in Yosemite to somehow either meet Ansel and receive 4 prints as gifts (but please make sure that you lose the negs for these only once printed photos!) or perhaps buy 4 prints at the gift shop, then why not append a Whole-Plate camera to his accompanying luggage? Why is it so easy for Team N to accept a tortured Rube Goldberg type logic construct rather than the Sir William blessed premise that Mr. Brooks produced both the prints and the Norsigian negatives? Hint: It has something to do with that classic but deadly combination of hubris and greed.
I look forward to Brooke DeLarco’s input. BTW, any further information from the man that sold Norsigian the negs?
It’s my understanding that Irving Schwartz, the Fresno dealer who sold the negatives to Rick Norsigian, has stated that he has more precise information about the people from whom he acquired them. From Team Norsigian’s report on this, it seems that Schwartz won’t disclose anything unless he gets paid — and apparently he expects to get paid proportionally in some way to the exorbitant value estimated by David W. Streets. More on principle than because of the amount of compensation he asks (unspecified), Team Norsigian refused to pay him. And no other source (newspaper, etc.) has opted to make him an offer. So, unless Schwartz decides to talk for free, I don’t think we’ll get more from him.
Thank you Allan and Richard for your continued discussion of this “controversy”. The report on Earl’s “body” of work is indeed limited and shabby at best.
I can assure you, without a doubt, that there is a collection of his works that have been located within the family, through a direct inheritance from Earl himself to his great grandson. These documents and photo’s will provide extremely compelling substantiation that he did, in fact, take the glass negatives.
As much as I would like to reveal them here, I can only say that these facts will very soon be made public.
Brooke, thank you for updating us; I am totally tantalized but will await your good words! As much as anything, I am very happy that Earl Brooks is having some deserved recognition! As I said in a previous comment, this whole adventure has been at times exalting serendipitous vulgar crazy crass weird and wonderful!I suppose we should at least be grateful to Team Norsigian for bringing your grandfather into the limelight!
Over two months ago, Arnold Peter stated in a comment in this very blog:
[B]”We are in the process of arranging for a chemical analysis of the negatives and comparison of the Norsigian negatives with authenticated Adams negatives to determine if there are identical plate-holder markings around the borders of the images.”[/B]
Surely they must have arranged this by now. Have they communicated any conclusions to you, Mr. Coleman?
I’ve heard nothing further about this from Team Norsigian. I assume this is their next move, since without further evidence — hard evidence, not inference, supposition, and hypothesis — they’ll find it difficult to get anyone to take them seriously, even in the media (myself included).
They would be crazy to have them tested at this stage. As is, they can still get some fool to buy them, but if proven to not be Adams then they will get nothing. The principles of PRS Media look like they probably have some pretty hefty cosmetic surgery bills so I can’t imgagine they would want to risk it.
I think that Team Norsigian should cut their losses at this point and sell the Brooks family back the negatives (for $45). I can just see a quite nice finely printed coffee table book of say the 40 best photographs along with a historical introduction to that period of California photography and, and this is most important, a large,illustrated educational chapter on the whole Norsigian/Brooks saga, possibly titled “Art and Hucksterism” by one A. D. Coleman. I’m sure that I and (tens of) thousands of others would buy a copy!!
If Earl Brooks took these negatives, then how do we explain the Team Norsigian report by handwriting “experts” that says that the handwriting of Virginia Best Adams is on the manila envelopes that held the negatives all those years? Perhaps a “second opinion” by a handwriting expert with impeccable credentials should be obtained.
I could put together a portfolio of portraits, and photos of buildings and factories taken by Ansel Adams, conceal the name of the photographer, and put that set of photos forward as the work of a unremarkable journeyman photographer who could never ever rise to the exalted level of an Ansel Adams. Never forget that Ansel Adams took thousands of pedestrian photos to put bread on the table, and didn’t gain fame and fortune until his later years.
“Culture Monster” in the Los Angeles Times on November 2 reports that a lengthy Earl Brooks memoir has emerged, describing among other things a summer spent in Yosemite.
William Turnage says that, in this memoir, Brooks discusses working with glass plate negatives. Isn’t it time to see whether the handwriting on the manila envelopes might be by Brooks or someone else rather than by Virginia Adams? Such an analysis should be done by a forensic document examiner of impeccable credentials.
Agreed to Mr. Heaphy on Nov. 7. But, then, we’re back to the basic conundrum first put forward and continually illuminated by Mr. Coleman… which is:
The conundrum of Team Norsigian actually saying they’re seeking the truth, vs. Team Norsigian actually stonewalling any credible avenue for the truth to be found.
It’s been said here by Mr. Coleman and others (myself included,) that Team Norsigian will likely never consent to the forensic analysis required to even “attempt” to lay the question to rest scientifically, including handwriting. They will also likely never consent to the observational analysis available with the resources and experts at the Adams Archive at CCP Tucson. They’ve been amply challenged to do so, yet they obfuscate or ignore.
My guess is they’re quite scared about the almost incredible “discovery” of Brooks (being observed by Mr. Coleman in great detail without prejudice) which, for me, makes any forthcoming posts from the Brooks side extremely interesting. I, too, have no stake to the authorship of these negs; only a challenge to Team Norsigian to substantiate their claim to Adams with more than what Mr. Alt, et al., has to offer.
I’ve heard enough from Team Norsigian, until what they say becomes substantive. Otherwise, I’m just an avid reader of this saga.
Keep up the good work.
Gentlemen, How right you all are. It is all I can do to not spill the beans right now on what is truly an amazing story.
As I stated before we have in our possession 600 plus pages of written memoirs, hand written diaries and numerous photos albums of Yosemite and other wilderness landscapes. These documents place Earl at the family home in Visalia, summers spent in Yosemite, and other notable places in his remarkable life. There are family pictures of the entire Brooks clan, including Marian as a young child, and, believe it or not, one of Earl astride a white horse! LOL! A book indeed could very well be in the making.
Ever since I found out about this I have been on a mission to locate any and all information on Earl that I could uncover. My primary focus was on the photographs and without telling all that I have found, I will say that there are many that bear a remarkable “similarity ” to those in the glass negatives. I could have broken this all wide open weeks ago, but instead, have been asked to have patience so that others may reveal the facts to the public through the media channels. I am awaiting those disclosures to be made public by a prominent journalist who was given the “exclusive” on this story.
I have, however, spoken with Mike Boehm from the LA Times. I told many of these facts to him, and gave him some pictures. He was very persistent in asking me if I had compared the handwriting samples, on the glass negatives envelopes, to those of Earl’s. At his insistence I took a look at some of the notes that accompanied the memoirs and hastily said they did not appear to be a match. When I read his blog and saw that my statements were used in casting doubt on the handwriting, I re-examined the diaries that are in Earl’s pen. I have since found them to be, in my opinion, a match. So although I am not “expert” in handwriting analysis, I now believe Earl’s writing is on the envelopes.
Mr Boehm also used a statement by Bill Tunage to the effect that there was no “smoking gun” in these documents. I have been in touch with Mr. Tunage and, while the Adams Trust has been most helpful and supportive in assisting us, on this I must disagree. Contained within the documents and photographs, there is, again in my opinion, not only an outright smoking gun, but many derringers as well!
Lastly I will say that I am grateful to Rick Norsigian for finding these negatives. I am sure that he truly believed that he had found lost works of Ansel Adams. As more comes out about this story is revealed I have no doubt that these glass negatives will ultimately attributed to Earl Brooks.
“Gentlemen, How right you all are. It is all I can do to not spill the beans right now on what is truly an amazing story. ”
Brooke, this HAS been an amazing story and I am very happy that your grandfather is getting his deserved recognition. Please spill the beans when you feel it is appropriate! I honestly believe a book would do well but I am no expert, perhaps Mr. Coleman may be a better prognosticator! If a book IS in the offing, please put me down for a signed copy :>)
I wonder if CNN will be as quick to run with this beautiful emerging story as they were with the hyperbolic hysterical $200, 000, 000 blurt?
Thanks for the above remarkable post and please dare to deliver the derringers in due course! Has Mr. Peter been in contact with you?
Ms. Delarco,
As close to this debate as you are, Thank You for your level-headed diplomacy, especially in the last paragraph of your most recent post.
Anything you write or disclose, when your time comes, I will read with great interest. When your time comes.
Respectfully,
Ken Nelson
“I am awaiting those disclosures to be made public by a prominent journalist who was given the “exclusive” on this story.”
Brooke, I hope to see you in a feature on TV! :>) When do you expect the prominent journalist to break the story?
I really really wonder how this would have played out if Miriam Walton wasn’t watching TV that night!!
“I really really wonder how this would have played out if Miriam Walton wasn’t watching TV that night!!”
No doubt the ‘Team’ would be wintering in the Bahamas right now if not for that stroke of luck.
Hello Mr. Coleman,
I was rereading some of your articles about the Ansel Adams controversy, and ran across this paragraph in post 11:
“The trailer does have one moment of real interest: a fleeting glimpse of a photograph of Yosemite, its negative much damaged along its top edge, depicting a view across a lake towards what I think may be Half Dome in the distance. Notably, the negative includes a dozen people standing and sitting along a road on the shore at the lower left side of the image. In order to emphasize what he saw as the eternal aspects of this park, Adams almost invariably avoided all signs of human presence in his Yosemite photographs. I’ve never seen an Adams image of Yosemite that included tourists; if authenticated, this would be a first (for me, at least).”
Should the presence of a group of tourists in this photo be used as evidence to rule out Ansel Adams as the photographer? I have great respect for your expertise on photography, but I think that you are in error on this point. It is a secondary point, but perhaps you and you readers can learn something new about Ansel Adams from me. You are indisputably an expert on photography as art. I am a bit of an amateur expert on the history of the Sierra Nevada and of the Sierra Club.
By the way, the lake in question is Mirror Lake, and the peak is Mount Watkins, not Half Dome. Chuck Pratt, Yvon Chouinard and Warren Harding climbed the vertical South Face of Mount Watkins in an epic 5 day ascent with limited water in extremely hot conditions in 1964. I wrote the Wikipedia biography of Chuck Pratt, so I’m somewhat familiar with this peak.
Your statement about Adams’ exclusion of humans and even signs of human habitation from his artistic work in Yosemite is true and well-known. However, his famous artistic landscape images are only a portion of his total output. I am sure you are aware of his portraits, many of famous artists and photographers. I assume you are familiar with the photos of Native Americans he took at the Taos Pueblo and of Japanese Americans he took at the Manzanar internment camp in the Eastern Sierra.
You may not know or recall, however, that he was the staff photographer for the Sierra Club annual High Trips for at least seven years in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In these photos, mostly taken in Yosemite and other High Sierra regions, he would routinely include groups of Sierra Club tourists. I think it is fair to say that Ansel Adams was totally wrapped up in Sierra Club culture in those years. All his best friends were leading members of the club including his wife Virginia, and many of them, especially Francis Farquhar and Cedric Wright, mentored and shaped his artistic career from its very earliest days. This was an immersive culture – these folks spent one month together in the wilderness each summer, and socialized and organized constantly the rest of the time. Adams was a devoted Sierra Club activist from the mid 1920s to about 1970 – roughly 45 years. Adams left in disgust over the bitter faction fighting connected to the ouster of David Brower from the leadership, though he was himself an active member of the faction that fired Brower. I joined the Sierra Club at age 24 in 1976, and met a few of the old timers from those days on wilderness trips. I spent two weeks in the High Sierra with Jules Eichorn, Adam’s piano student and darkroom assistant.
Here is a link to a slideshow of a presentation portfolio completed to commemorate the 1928 Sierra Club High Trip to the Canadian Rockies.
http://www.sierraclub.org/history/ansel-adams/slideshow/
This is the only large set of this type of Ansel Adams Sierra Club photos available online, but it is typical of the sort of photos that were taken on the other trips in Yosemite and throughout the High Sierra as well. Many such photos were published in the Sierra Club Bulletin, now called Sierra magazine. Please note that several of these photos include lines of unidentified tourists, and there are also several summit photos showing mountaineering teams. At least nine of the published Adams photos from the Canadian Rockies include humans.
My point here is that you can’t look at the characteristics of a few photos wrenched out of context, then compare them with the commercial or artistic output of Ansel Adams, Earl Brooks or any other photographer, and then cite those stylistic differences as evidence against either photographer being the source. Ansel Adams’ everyday work differed from his greatest work. Earl Brooks’ California work differed from his Delaware work. Team Norsigian shouldn’t commit that logical fallacy, and neither should you.
I stand corrected. Of course Adams made different kinds of pictures for different purposes. (Remember his 1941 book for kids, Michael and Anne in the Yosemite Valley?) So of course there are many that stand hors d’oeuvre, so to speak — outside the defined body of work. The fact that this doesn’t look like a typical Adams, as we think of that category, doesn’t mean he didn’t make it. The presence of some such images in the Norsigian Collection no more proves they’re not of his making than the absence of such images would verify that they were.
I wasn’t adducing it as proof either way, I might add in my own defense. Just saying that I hadn’t seen such images of his before. Thanks for pointing the way to more of these online.