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. But the photographer’s family rejected the claim and insisted that the photographs were fakes. Matthew Adams, the photographer’s grandson, said: “There is no real hard evidence. I’m sceptical.” Bill Turnage, managing director of the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust, said: “It’s an unfortunate fraud. It’s very distressing.”

“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. The photographs apparently were taken between 1919 and the early 1930s, well before Adams who is known as the father of American photography became nationally recognized in the 1940s, Streets said.

“This is going to show the world the evolution of his eye, of his talent, of his skill, his gift, but also his legacy,” Streets said. “And it’s a portion that we thought had been destroyed in the studio fire.”

How these 6.5 x 8.5 inch glass plate negatives of famous Yosemite landscapes and San Francisco landmarks — some of them with fire damage — made their way from Adams collection 70 years ago to a Southern California garage sale in 2000 can only be guessed. 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. “It is my belief that he brought these negatives with him for teaching purposes and to show students how to not let their negatives be engulfed in a fire,” Alt said. “I think this clearly explains the range of work in these negatives, from very early pictorialist boat pictures, to images not as successful, to images of the highest level of his work during this time period.”

Alt said it is impossible to know why Adams would store them in Pasadena and never reclaim them. The plates were individually wrapped in newspaper inside deteriorating manila envelopes. Notations on each envelope appeared to have been made by Virginia Adams, the photographer’s wife, according to handwriting experts Michael Nattenberg and Marcel Matley. They compared them to samples provided by the Adams’ grandson.

While most of the negatives appear never to have been printed, several are nearly identical to well-known Adams prints, the experts said. Meteorologist George Wright studied clouds and snow cover in a Norsigian negative to conclude that it was taken at about the same time as a known Adams photo of a Yosemite tree.

In addition to Yosemite the California wilderness that Adams helped conserve the negatives depict California’s Carmel Mission, views of a rocky point in Carmel, San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf, a sailing yacht at sea and an image of sand dunes. “The fact that these locations were well-known to Adams, and visited by him, further supports the proposition that all of the images in the collection were most probably created by Adams,” said art expert Robert Moeller.

The 15 pieces on show are playful self-portraits of the artist herself in a style suggestive of the daydreams of a young girl. Bright colours and a whimsical sense of form create a distinctive world within each work.

The more you look into Liu Jie’s world of cartoon-like characters and strikingly juxtaposed colours, the more conscious we become that our wonder is reflected in the wide-eyed gaze of the artist herself, peering back at us from the canvas, observing our world with a childish innocence, a coquettish curiosity, perhaps even a sense of bewilderment at what she sees or, possibly, at being the object of such interest herself.

Free of external reference or artifice, it is this personal communication between the artist and viewer that makes Liu Jie’s work so engaging.

Within ten minutes of the first pieces being hung from the metal shutters of a derelict store front, we were pounced upon by council officials flashing badges with an aggressive agenda to pursue.

Quite a bizarre incident really, beginning with them trying to covertly photograph us. We were then told menacingly that our artworks would be seized by these charming government officials and destroyed at will should they choose. Our response, we grabbed a few pieces each and ran – also quite bizarre as i am sure it must have looked like the great art heist…..

We are a locally based studio and we have all been regular visitors to Brick Lane for years and we ask – What The !