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• Issue #282
• Article

By Michael Diemar

Photo dealer Terry Etherton.

Anywhere in the world of art, antiques and collectables where there's money to be made, there is bound to be fakery. Two of the most famous cases in photography were the Lewis Hine and Man Ray scandals at the end of the 1990s, but there have been others, such as the so-called Brazilian Henri Cartier-Bresson copy prints. Even so, the photography market is pretty well policed by dealers, galleries, collectors, photographers and estates, indeed much better than the art market as a whole, where some statistics are shocking. In the early 2000s when the market for Russian art skyrocketed, it was estimated that at least 50% of Russian avant-garde art on the market was fake.

Then e-commerce grew and eBay quickly became a good source where all kinds of interesting photographs would turn up. The site, however, also attracted a number of scammers, and it still does. But eBay isn't the only problem. On September 23, I received an email from Etherton Gallery, Tucson, AZ, about fake/unauthorized copy works by Frederick Sommer, Richard Avedon, Man Ray, Paul Strand Danny Lyon, Robert Adams and Ansel Adams; and that the gallery had had problems when notifying LiveAuctioneers about it. On September 28, I spoke to Terry Etherton and started our conversation by asking him when he first noticed the problem photographs.

"Just over two weeks ago, somebody sent me an email, asking, 'Have you seen all of those Frederick Sommer photographs that just went up on LiveAuctioneers?' I hadn't, so I went to the website and 15 Frederick Sommers came up all at once. Sommers are rare. To find just one in an auction is unusual and 15 is way, way out of the ordinary.

"As soon as I looked at the page, I knew they were fakes. Just bad reproductions, they looked like they were third, fourth, or fifth generation. Then I started looking at the signatures. Every single one of them was fake. We're one of the galleries and dealers who are associated with Sommer, and the foundation. I've seen hundreds of his prints and signatures over the years, and I know a fake when I see it. Half of the 15 fakes were with a company called Treasure House Inc. The other half were with an auction house called I Plus J Auctions. I then turned my attention to the other material they had put up for auction. There were 15-20 fake Robert Adams photographs. There were fake Strands, fake Brandts, fake Man Rays, fake Avedons, among others. Altogether around 120 pictures."

Having spotted the problem photographs, Etherton contacted LiveAuctioneers to alert them to the issue.

"I e-mailed them, 'Do you realize that this stuff that you just posted with these two auction houses is all fake? These are forgeries. They're fake. None of them are right.' LiveAuctioneers basically did nothing. Their position was 'If you find something on LiveAuctioneers and you have a question about it, you should contact the auction house directly.' There's a thing you can click that will take you directly to the person who posted that image.

"I did that and asked questions like, 'Can you tell me about this or that? I got no response whatsoever. Then I tried tracking them down by telephone. Treasure House Inc. was located in San Leandro, CA. The phone was constantly busy. When I called I Plus J Auctions, the phone just rang and rang and rang. There was no way to talk to these people.

"Then I emailed them, 'You just posted a whole bunch of fake stuff. We're aware of it, and we're not just going to let this happen.' I got nowhere with them, and so I kept on with LiveAuctioneers and showed them that those were all fakes. They weren't even good fakes. Really sloppy. One of them was an Ansel Adams, Moon and Half Dome, which is one of his most recognized images. I clicked on that, and the signature on the back was a forged Robert Adams signature! When I clicked on a Danny Lyon from Conversations with the Dead, it was signed Crossing the Ohio Danny Lyon!

"I contacted a number of the relevant galleries, photographers and estates to inform them what was going on. Fraenkel Gallery confirmed that the Robert Adams and Garry Winogrand photographs were fake, as did the Frederick Sommer Foundation about the Sommers."

Etherton kept badgering LivAuctioneers with emails.

"Eventually, I got hold of the compliance officer via e-mail. We emailed back and forth. Initially, they wouldn't admit that those two houses were selling fakes. When I dug into Treasure House Inc., I quickly discovered that they had a terrible reputation. I even came across a video that somebody had made, 'Don't buy from these people; they have been selling fakes since 2015!' It was also evident to me that Treasure House Inc and I Plus J Auctions were working together because the entries were identical, or at least their source was the same. One was on the West Coast, the other on the East Coast.

"I finally managed to speak to the LiveAuctioneers compliance officer on the phone. It was a strange experience. He gave his name as Blaine F. but he wouldn't give me his last name.  I told him that I had all of our email exchanges, and that I was recording the phone conversations I had with Live Auctioneers. Then he told me, 'I do this for a number of different companies so I can't spend more than a couple minutes on the phone with you because I've got other clients I have to deal with.' That's the compliance officer, the person who is supposed to be monitoring the whole operation and making sure that it's all on the level. And he had very little time to talk to me.

"I told him, 'First of all, you're not helping me. I think you're just taking the company line here, and you're deflecting, and you're not addressing this issue. We have 15,000 people on our mailing list. We've got the AIPAD mailing list, and we have a big web presence. We're on Artnet on Artsy. Instagram, Facebook. You name it.' I told him, 'I'm going to go public, throw LiveAuctioneers' name out there and warn people about you. That got his attention, but I had to threaten all of that to get him to actually take those two companies off their platform, which happened on September 27 when they informed me, 'We are no longer doing business with Treasure House or I Plus J Auctions.' I really got down hard on them and I guess that did it."

But things didn't end there, Etherton explains.

"While those two houses were off LiveAuctioneers, the guilty parties just switched to other names and that way the scam continues. The first thing I did this morning was to switch on the computer, go to LiveAuctioneers and once again, there are a bunch of fake Frederick Sommers photographs, the same I had seen previously. Evidently, some had sold just the day before. To make it all seem legitimate, they also posted auction results for Sommer from Heritage Auctions and Swann Galleries. Going over the results for the fake Frederick Sommers, I noted that some had sold for $3,500–$4500. That's what angers me about LiveAuctioneers. They should have acted immediately and should have kept tabs on what was happening on the site."

Caveat emptor, let the buyer beware. Etherton continues.

"Just one example, I saw a fake Richard Avedon, estimated at $180,000–$200,000, and the opening bid was the reserve price, $500. The people who buy must think they're getting a bargain. They're preying on people who aren't that savvy. But LiveAuctioneers seems to be riddled with fakes; Vincent van Gogh paintings for 500 bucks: even if they cover themselves, stating that they're ‘after’ van Gogh. Well, in that case, why are they signed? The same goes for the likely fake Degas, Renoir and Cézanne paintings."

I asked Etherton what further steps he intends to take, contacting the police or the FBI, for example.

"I haven't gone that far, because I've just been dealing with LiveAuctioneers. My goal was to get them to take this stuff down, not work with the people who are posting all this stuff, and they've done part of that. But there are still a lot of fakes up. And even though they have stopped working with Treasure House Inc and I Plus J Auctions, the names are still listed on the website. Every time a fake is sold, LiveAuctioneers gets a cut. They have rules, but what's the use if those rules are broken repeatedly?"

When Etherton initially contacted me, he suggested an AIPAD discussion about the problem should be organized.

"I sent the idea to the AIPAD forum, explaining about the fakes on LivAuctioneers and my experiences of dealing with the company. This is something that concerns everyone in the market. It's bad for galleries, dealers, collectors and the people who buy from the scammers. I am going to try to track down people who have bought from them. Obviously, I can't get the information from LiveAuctioneers but I'm thinking of using social media, and to see if I can get the story out through the news media."

Etherton is determined to stamp it out, and returns to the Fredrick Sommer reproductions.

"I can rightfully say our gallery is the one that is most identified with Frederick Sommer. I have worked with the foundation, which is based in Arizona, for a long time and have probably sold more Sommers than anybody. And then suddenly 15 of these fakes come up. One sold for $3,000 and quite likely, somebody's going to ask me, 'How come yours is priced at $28,000?' Yes, it's really damaging. It's damaging to artists, the galleries that represent them, and the estates. What the scammers are doing is basically stealing."

Michael Diemar is editor-in-chief of The Classic, a print and digital magazine about classic photography. In August 2025, he cofounded Vintage Photo Fairs Europe, an organization focused on promoting independent tabletop fairs in Europe and spreading knowledge about classic photography in general. He is a long-time writer about the photography scene, writing extensively for several Scandinavian photography publications, as well as for the E-Photo Newsletter and I Photo Central.