New Ansel Adams Negatives Inspire Questions?

Ansel Adams Lost Images

In an age when images are stored as a series of zeros and ones the alleged discovery of long lost Ansel Adams negatives inspires the question, How many zeros may be added to the value of an actual physical negative?

Mathew Adams disputes the authenticity of the negatives and raises long debated issues surrounding intent. Mathew Adams asserts:

“ It should be remembered that while there is a good deal of creativity and purpose in the negative, the print is the expression of the artist’s intent. It is the print that carries the value.”

While I am not questioning the value of the print, I would like to ask that you, the reader, to comment on where intent lies.

When a photographer marches into the wilderness to capture its beauty they do so with not just purpose and creativity but also intent. Does more intent truly lie in the act of printing? When one sits down to edit and print their images they of course do so with intent and discard or neglect to print images they do not find satisfactory.  Are we to then discount the value of the images that were not printed or can we find value in the fact that they were not printed? Clearly we can assume that an image Adams printed fit into his aesthetic ideas. From Adams unprinted negatives can we infer his reasoning and learn more about why the artist may not have selected to print certain images?

Due to the destruction of 5,000 plates in the 1937 darkroom fire we may never know if these images, along with others, would have been printed and displayed.  The scientific evidence seems compelling but is it enough? The whole situation reminds me of the 2006 Harry Moses Documentary Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock, in which the provenance, rather the lack thereof, of a Pollock-esq painting purchased at a yard sale is explored.

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