Most of us have had a client that has been or has had a family member that seemed to have “collected” a bit too much.  This often causes anxiety over the welfare of their loved one and the overwhelming thought of the work they might be left to do once they inherit such a massive accumulation of, well they don’t know.  Is it trash or is it treasure?

This was the position that Jay and Lee Smith found themselves in when their mother Carol Carlisle passed leaving them her home and all of the contents that the home was filled with.  They remembered their mother being a collector all of their lives, but never really knew what the collections contained.  They started the arduous journey of sorting through her stuff one foot at a time while having yard sales.  Their mother collected a lot of things, but all were in good condition.  One day, while going through a portion of the attic they came across a wooden trunk that was filled with pictures and plastic tubing.  They assumed that the photographs were left over from their mother’s hobby as a photographer or her job.

Although unknown to most people, Carol Carlisle held her place in history as the first female editor of Popular Photography Magazine and was responsible for the careers of some of the most famous photographers of her time.  Carol’s children, Jay and Lee, were unaware of the possible importance of the photos that they had uncovered so they added them to the yard sale.  During one of these yard sales a man inquired about any antique cameras they might have for sale.  Carol’s daughter, Lee, didn’t have any cameras, but pointed him in the direction of some prints that she had found in the attic.  Upon seeing the photos he immediately got excited and asked if he could take a photo of the picture to send to a friend.  Thankfully this man was honest and explained to Lee that she had something special that could be worth a lot of money.  Lee, thinking that what she had in her possession wasn’t photo copies as she had thought, but original prints went to work finding out what they were worth.

Lee and her brother, Jay, thought that the prints must have come from all of the years she worked as the editor of Popular Photography.  They immediately got them appraised and found that not only were they rare original photographs by some of the most famous photographers of all time, but had subjects that included Marilyn Monroe, Pablo Picasso, and even Henry Matisse.  Finding out that the photographs were originals came with another obstacle; did their Mom actually own the prints or did the original artist or the magazine own them?

After some careful investigating it was found that since the magazine had a policy that stated that all submissions would not be returned to the artist, the magazine would then own the photographs.  Going further, since all of the photos that Carol Carlisle had collected came out of the trash bin(of which was well known to staff), the magazine gave up rights to them making Carol Carlisle and her heirs the rightful owners.  The first photo to be auctioned was taken by renowned photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson and featured artist Henri Matisse among his beloved birds.  It sold at auction for $12,000.  A year later another discovery of photos was found in a hall closet.  Among those was the only wide shot photo of when Jack Ruby shot John F. Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.  Photographer Robert Jackson received the Pulitzer Prize for this photo.  You can see some of Carol Carlisle’s collection by visiting The Carol Carlisle Collection.