THE RICK NORSIGIAN STORY
HOW A FRESNO SCHOOL DISTRICT PAINTER BECAME AN ART EXPERT AND PROVED THAT HE HAD DISCOVERED THE LOST NEGATIVES OF ANSEL ADAMS

In the spring of 2000 while perusing items at a garage sale, Rick Norsigian came across a wooden box that held a stack of manila envelopes that were deteriorating from age. Inside were some interesting looking glass negatives wrapped in newspaper, dated 1942 and 1943. Working as a painter for the Fresno schools, he spent his weekends on his hobby…looking for antiques. Norsigian purchased all of the sixty negatives he found at the sale.

Upon sharing his find with friends and family, people commented that they looked like Ansel Adams’ work. Norsigian was immediately struck by how closely the negatives, which he had scanned and developed into prints, resembled the published works, some appearing almost identical to the published works of Ansel Adams. He read everything he could possibly get his hands on and spent hours at the California State Fresno library. As he began to make himself an expert on Ansel Adams’ photography and development techniques, Norsigian became more convinced about the origin of the negatives. For example, he read that in 1937 there was a fire in Adams’ darkroom where he lost 5,000 negatives. Norsigian discovered that eight of his sixty negatives also had fire damage. In 2007, the Los Angeles Times ran a major story on Norsigian and his remarkable discovery.

After nearly eight years, Norsigian had gone about as far as he could on his own and through some contacts in Fresno he found prominent entertainment attorney Arnold Peter. Peter had once lived and worked in Fresno before joining Universal Studios to start his entertainment career. Peter, who was in the midst of launching his own boutique entertainment law firm, Raskin Peter Rubin & Simon, became fascinated as much with the glass negatives as he did with Norsigian’s single-minded drive and passion to prove that he had come into possession of Ansel Adams’ long lost negatives. Norsigian retained Peter as his attorney, the two became close friends and decided to once and for all prove what Norsigian believed in his heart.

Based on the initial evidence he had amassed, Norsigian went to individuals who knew and worked with Ansel Adams. Yet, while many were amazed at what they were looking at, none of them were willing to definitely state that these glass negatives were produced by Adams. After viewing the negatives, several curators from museums and auction houses expressed their belief that the negatives were Adams’ originals but no one would go on the record.

In order to finally authenticate the negatives, Norsigian hired two experts--one in hand writing analysis and the other in climate and meteorology. The husband of Adams’ biographer Mary Street Alinder, told Norsigian the handwriting on the envelopes in which the negatives were stored belonged to Adams’ wife, Virginia. Using the envelopes and an exemplar, the handwriting expert confirmed that the writing did belong to Virginia Adams!

The meteorological expert compared the negatives of Jeffrey Pine which is on Sentinel Mountain in Yosemite to published Adams photographs taken at the same location. By looking at the cloud formation, the snow on the mountains and the shadow cast by a tree, the expert determined that the photographs were taken on the same day!

Rick Norsigian has spent more than eight years studying Ansel Adams’ work, putting together the pieces of this puzzle, and based on all the empirical evidence, he is certain that he is in possession of sixty glass negatives of Ansel Adams never before seen by the public.