Sometimes, an event feels so outrageous or unlikely, it's difficult as a journalist to resist the well-worn cliches we're trained to avoid: "You couldn't make it up!"; "It's like something out of Black Mirror!" and so on. Well, such an event has just taken place, and I have to be honest: I'm lost for words. So I'm just going to skip the formalities, and simply tell you what took place.
One of the most famous photographs ever taken, taken by a man who spent his life fighting for photography to be taken seriously as fine art, has now been AI-colorised, printed in editions of ten, and offered for sale at a prestigious New York gallery. Without anyone bothering to ask if that was okay.
As reported by Art News the Danziger Gallery, a well-regarded photography dealer in Manhattan, exhibited what it described as an "A.I. Generated" color version of Ansel Adams' Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico at the Association of International Photography Art Dealers' annual show, The Photography Show, at the Park Avenue Armory last month. The show ran from April 22-26 2026. Works at this event have previously sold for tens of thousands of dollars.
The image was created from the prompt "Make a realistic color version of Ansel Adams' iconic 'Moonrise Over Hernandez'" and was then, according to its own description, "proofed, regenerated, and photoshopped" over several months before being printed by master printer Esteban Mauchi in three sizes.
There's just one problem: nobody thought to tell the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust it existed.
Why his legacy matters
Here's some context for the uninitiated. Ansel Adams (1902–1984) was a photographer and environmentalist whose large-format black-and-white landscapes, particularly of the American West, are among the most recognised images in photographic history. He pioneered the Zone System, a technical framework for controlling exposure and development to achieve a full tonal range, and co-founded the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
More than perhaps any other photographer of his era, he dedicated his career to the argument that the camera was as legitimate an artistic tool as a brush or a chisel. Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, shot in 1941, is his most famous single image, and originals have sold at auction for over half a million dollars.
Interestingly, the Trust's public statement, published on Instagram over the weekend, isn't quite the AI-bashing screed you might expect. They were at pains to point out that Adams himself would have been fascinated by AI tools. "Ansel was an innovator who expanded the expressive and technical possibilities of his medium," the statement reads. "He was remarkably prescient about, and excited by, the potential of computers to transform photography."
Their issue, then, isn't the use of AI itself. It's the use of creative content without permission. That's something I obviously feel strongly about myself as a writer, and I'm pretty sure most photographers do too. However James Danziger, the owner of the gallery, doesn't believe he's done anything wrong. “As the image is in the public domain I had every right to create a new and transformative work,” he wrote in a public statement.
Legally speaking, he may well be right. But morally, I'm not so sure. The Trust's statement noted that "few figures fought harder than Ansel to secure photography's place as fine art, or contributed more to the cultural conditions that gave rise to today's photography market." James Danziger talked of his "love of the iconic image"; it's a shame that love didn't extend to a courtesy call.
