Based on the precedent that Sotheby’s and Trustee themselves set in withdrawing selected contested works from the auction, it would seem that all those with work in the collection have standing that would enable them to challenge the disposition of the remaining collection, if that disposition takes the form of a sale. It wouldn’t surprise me if more of the photographers in the collection decided to make their voices heard on this issue as placement of the rest of the collection moves to the front burner. […]
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The Polaroid Collection is inarguably a whole, much greater than the sum of its parts. So this auction is an amputation — which doesn’t render the remainder of the collection insignificant or meaningless, but inarguably diminishes it by reducing the complex synergy of its interactive parts. Indeed, I could feel the synergy leaving the room, almost palpably, as I wandered through the galleries. […] The publication of such a glib, superficial and ill-considered “psychoanalytic” attack on freelance activity beneath a sensationalized headline was obviously intended as a provocative act; I found myself impelled to respond. A great many of my professional colleagues and close friends — artists, writers, photographers and others — have chosen to exist in what this remarkable diagnosis so condescendingly calls a “lowly status,” and they don’t strike me as inherently any more neurotic than the average late-twentieth-century American. […] |
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Cowflop from the Adams Herd (1)
This minor event has evoked such hysteria and vituperation from the Adams marketing machine — which does not own the negatives in question or have any claim thereto — that this phenomenon in itself merits some examination. William Turnage, managing trustee of the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust, actually compared the claims of Norsigian to the Nazi propaganda strategy of the “big lie.” “Hitler used that technique,” Turnage said. “You don’t tell a small one. You tell a big one.” It takes one deeply sick puppy to analogize Norsigian’s assertions of authenticity for these negatives to the despised Nazi propaganda technique. Turnage should feel ashamed of himself for this loathsome conduct, which embarrasses him and the Ansel Adams Trust as well. […]