Ansel Adams Garage Sale Photos: Rick Norsigian $200 Million Find

by NowPublic Staff | July 27, 2010 at 06:13 am

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Ansel Adams Negatives Bought At Pasadena Garage Sale For $45 Worth $200 Million

For artist Rick Norsigian it is garage sale purchase to end all garage sales purchases - a series of Ansel Adams glass purchased for $45 10 years ago at a Pasadena garage sale are reportedly valued at $200 million.

Those boxes contained 65 glass negatives created by famed nature photographer Ansel Adams in the early period of his career. Experts believed the negatives were destroyed in a 1937 darkroom fire that destroyed 5,000 plates.

"It truly is a missing link of Ansel Adams and history and his career," said David W. Streets, the appraiser and art dealer who is hosting an unveiling of the photographs at his Beverly Hills, California, gallery Tuesday.

Ansel Adams iconic landscapes has made him one America's most celebrated photographers. The photos from the garage sale were apparently taken between 1919 and 1930. They include photos of Yosemite and San Francisco.

The person who sold them to Norsigian at the garage sale told him he bought them in the 1940s at a warehouse salvage in Los Angeles.

Photography expert Patrick Alt, who helped confirm the authenticity of the negatives, suspects Adams carried them to use in a photography class he was teaching in Pasadena, California, in the early 1940s.

Meanwhile Rick Norsigian is planning to sell original prints of photographs to collectors and museums.