Ansel Adams, a photographer who died in 1984 and is famous for his large-scale black and white photographs, has had his work improved upon or rendered differently or besmirched (depending on how you regard this) by someone using AI.
The image in question, Moonrise Hernandez, New Mexico is described in Wikipedia thus:
The photograph shows the Moon rising in a dominating black sky with low clouds above a collection of modest dwellings, a church and a cross-filled graveyard, with snow-covered mountains in the background. Adams captured a single image, with the sunset lighting the white crosses and buildings.
According the Ansel Adams Gallery, Adams used an 8x10-inch wood view camera paired with a Cooke triple-convertible lens.
It's not just the finished photograph that singles out Adams, but also the exposure system that he devised. Not to get too deep into this, but film cameras in Adams' day would have no way of knowing what the lens was being pointed at.
That is not so with more with digital cameras that can have thousands of scenes pre-locked inside them against which they can judge what they were looking at and adjust exposure accordingly.
The classic example of a scene that a camera of Adams' day would find hard to interpret is a white cat on a black mat versus a black cat on snow, versus a grey cat on a grey mat.
So what Adams is noted for quite apart from his photographs, is that he invented a system for placing all the gradations of dark to light in a scene so that they would render pleasantly.
Adams was an art photographer and a commercial photographer. And when he was out on trips he would put his tripod and view camera on the roof of his shooting brake to get the height needed to get the perspective he wanted. Maybe he did for the Moonrise shot.
It was taken in 1941 and it is in the pubic domain due simply to the years that have passed since it was shot. So the legal right - at least according to the photographer who used AI - exists. Assuming that to be true, then the photographer could do pretty much what he wants with the original image.
Attribution
Let's clear this up first. In his rebuttal statement after being criticised, James Danziger said "When it was exhibited it was very clearly attributed as to exactly what it was." I assume that is true.
So the photo is in public domain and Danziger gave attribution - so he could do what he liked. But should he?
A number of photographers have come out and said it is a cheap affront to the work of a world-famous photographer.
The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust had this to say about the colourised photo.
Regarding the "Al-generated color version" of Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, exhibited and offered for sale by Danziger Gallery at the 2026 edition of The Photography Show, presented by AIPAD
The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust was established by Ansel Adams to steward his artistic and environmental legacies, consistent with his own ethos and intentions. The Trust did not authorize, endorse, consent to, or acquiesce in the "AI-generated color version" of "Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico" exhibited and offered for sale by Danziger Gallery at The Photography Show presented by AIPAD in April.
This was a substantial editioned offering at a major international sales event. It exploited Ansel's name, reputation, and his most iconic image, while failing to identify any human artist responsible for its creation.
The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust
What does The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust do?
Notably, it does not have a public-facing presence. It does not, for example, have its own website. The Trust manages the copyrights, licensing, and archives of Ansel Adams's work, but directs official inquiries and licensing requests through authorised representatives.
The University of Arizona Center For Creative Photography is one, and I cannot find any others. Their collection comprises a broad range of Adams' materials - everything from letters to contracts to exhibition materials.
The Ansel Adams Gallery
Then there is The Ansel Adams Gallery, which does have a website. The meta-description (the code built into a website that describes to search engines what the website is about) states:
Largest collection of Original Ansel Adams Photographs, framed prints and Contemporary Artists artwork. Buy Ansel Adams Fine Art Exclusives, Yosemite Special Edition and more
The lead text on the home page, the text intended to be read by visitors to the site, states:
The Ansel Adams Gallery strives to cultivate an aesthetic appreciation and concern for our world by offering visitors a unique variety of books, handcrafts, fine art prints, and an extraordinary collection of Ansel Adams original photographs.
The Ansel Adams Gallery and The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust are legally distinct entities with different purviews, with an intertwined history of crossover personnel.
The primary bridge between the two is the Adams Family (son, daughter-in-law, grandson) and business advisors who transitioned between the commercial retail business and the legal trust overseeing Ansel Adam's legacy.
Everybody Wants A Piece
It's the way of the world - everyone tries to make something from the material around them and from the people who have made something from the material around them.
I see two kinds of people trying to get a piece of what someone else has. There are those who openly declare their offerings, and there are those who try to sidle in sideways. I look at the former as people trying to make a living, and deserving of politeness, and the second as spammers.
Maybe Mr Danziger is one or other of these kinds. But where I stand on this Adams issue is that try as I might, I cannot get worked up about it.
The Trust and the Gallery want to hang onto either or both of Adams' reputation and of their piece of the pie that Adams created - a reputation that they did not create but inherited.
It is worth repeating that they are not the creators. This is why we have copyright - to protect creators for a meaningful period.
Maybe what Danziger did, was a betrayal. But what sort of betrayal? I am hard put to define it. It doesn't diminish Adams. If anything, the opposite.
In some ways these are the last struggles of individualism, like lava bubbling up in little splats from the general liquid below. We're all connected now and what one does really came from somebody else and from all of us. This is the end of any claim to be separate and apart.
None of this diminishes Ansel Adams. He took some terrific photographs.