Home of Indie Writer Matt Mitchell, Purveyor of Fine Bookery

Have you seen this? Some dude bought some film negatives at a yard sale and decided they were long lost Ansel Adams prints and so has begun to sell them. He sells them for as much as $7500, complete with a certificate of authenticity. By all accounts, he’s been an annoying shyster, badgering the Ansel Adams Trust to admit the prints are authentic, but of course they won’t do that, because there’s no way to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they are.

The shyster in question has “put together a team of experts,” who have of course done exactly as they were paid to do and signed off on the prints as being indisputably Adams’ work.

Opinions, however, do not guarantee authenticity.

To me, this is one huge ripoff of an artist’s name and legacy. It would be one thing to create prints for personal use and claim they are Adams’ work, or even to post them on the web under the artist’s name, free for people to download if they like, under the acknowledgment that they may or may not be actual authentic Adams prints.

But to sell them? To build a business around their guaranteed authenticity? It’s unscrupulous. This man is a shyster and a treasure hunter. Not that there’s anything wrong with treasure hunters in general, except when they are such failures at hunting treasure that they have to invent their treasure. Here is a man wanting to get rich off someone else’s name, someone else’s work, and he’s not a representative of Mr. Adams’ Trust, he’s not a relative, he’s nothing. He deserves less than nothing for his efforts in this, he deserves a nice long prison sentence.

The Adams Trust is suing him, and though I’m often on the side of free sharing, this guy just crossed the line with me: Profiteering in the most despicable manner. I hope the Adams Trust rips him wide open and drains him dry.