Bruce, regarding your brother-in-law's situation, I have taken the liberty of submitting a question: http://ask.metafilter.com/268234/Inheritance-Tax-on-estimated-value-of-photo-negatives-left-behind-WUTT It will be interesting to see if any expert answers are submitted. If nothing else, one would think that there would be some sort of system in place for such works to be donated to a library or alma mater so that they could at least not be lost to history. Destroying them seems to be a bit of a "scorched earth" policy. I have to believe that there are Estate Planners that could suggest something more reasonable.
Regarding the lawyer inserting himself, I agree with what others have expressed. The legal system will welcome, with open arms, the opportunity to extract any wealth from the situation that they can. I think an argument could be made that Vivian Maier's work had essentially NO economic value until that value was created by the work of Mr. Maloof (and others) in publicizing her work. The lawyer in involved himself in tracking down the alleged closer relative is no different than any other "ambulance chaser" lawyer, IMHO. I think we need to be careful before we deify Mr. Maloof, however. He is clearly a shrewd operator, given the way he has generated and leveraged media attention (etc.) into a book, a movie, and print sales, exhibits, etc. I was not aware, for example, that Vivian Maier was still alive (but hospitalized, apparently) when her storage locker stuff was sold. This page is interesting (and provides a lot of other links related to Vivian Maier and her work) http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~plbannos/VivianMaier.html Never having gotten to see the Finding Vivian Maier movie, I just purchased the DVD. I was also not aware of the BBC program "The Vivian Maier Mystery". That is an hour long program which is available to watch on Amazon video (and maybe NetFlix?) Here is the IMDB page for it: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3252208/ FINALLY, a while back I referred to an article by Kevin Coffee on the ethics for the journal "Museum Management and Curatorship" regarding work like Vivian Maier's. That article, entitled "Misplaced: ethics and the photographs of Vivian Maier" can be found here: The file 'VivianMaier_K_Coffee.pdf' (215 KB) is available for download at < http://dropbox.unl.edu/uploads/20140924/41a4684ff30b1ef8/VivianMaier_K_Coffee.pdf > for the next 14 days. It will be removed after Wednesday, September 24, 2014. On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 8:13 PM, Bruce Walker <bruce.wal...@gmail.com> wrote: > My brother-in-law, a retired photojournalist (Newsweek, Time), has > left specific instructions to destroy his negatives after his death so > his family won't be hit by US inheritance taxes on the estimated > market value of the collection. He sells through Getty and Polaris so > this is a valid financial threat. > > Kinda sad, I think. He did a close up and personal pictorial project > with a young Bob Dylan and Rotolo, his then girlfriend, living in New > York, and these rare shots would be destroyed, along with thousands of > others. > > > On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 8:37 PM, Godfrey DiGiorgi <godd...@me.com> wrote: >> Indeed. It has taught me ... I now have explicit instructions in my will as >> to what will happen with my photographs after I leave this mortal coil. Not >> that I expect them to be valuable to anyone besides me, but I will not allow >> vulpine lawyers to profit from my works. That's much worse than allowing >> treasure finders like Maloof and the other owners to profit from their >> discoveries. I'd much rather see the photos burned. >> >> The Virginia lawyer at the bottom of this latest turn of affairs is probably >> another redneck Fundamentalist Republican ... The worst kind of scum skimmer. >> >> Godfrey >> >> >>> On Sep 9, 2014, at 4:49 PM, Ann Sanfedele <ann...@nyc.rr.com> wrote: >>> >>> I'm not even reading all of that stuf and it makes me sad >> >> -- >> PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List >> PDML@pdml.net >> http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net >> to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and >> follow the directions. > > > > -- > -bmw > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- Photographers must learn not to be ashamed to have their photographs look like photographs. ~ Alfred Stieglitz -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
