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NYC man says he was conned into selling Arbus photos cheap

March 7, 2008

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NEW YORK (AP) _ A collector of African-American art was duped into selling a cache of previously unknown Diane Arbus photographs for a fraction of their value, and the buyer stands to reap hundreds of thousands of dollars from the deception at an auction next month, the collector claims in a lawsuit.

"I feel victimized," said Bayo Ogunsanya, who filed suit Wednesday in a federal court in Brooklyn. He wants a court to block the auction, void or change the terms of the sale and award him unspecified damages.

A lawyer for buyer Robert Langmuir called Ogunsanya's suit frivolous.

"Mr. Ogunsanya is a professional who seems to have had a case of seller's remorse and is trying to wring a few dollars out of my client," said the attorney, Peter Meltzer.

Ogunsanya, 50, of Brooklyn, bought a trunk full of photographs at a sale of unclaimed items from a Bronx storage facility in July 2002, according to the lawsuit. The trunk had once belonged to a black entertainer and businessman who had managed a Manhattan museum of oddities that closed in 1965.

Ogunsanya says he had no idea the images were Arbus photos when he sold them to Langmuir for a total of about $3,500 _ but he believes Langmuir knew full well that they were the prominent photographer's work.

Langmuir initially bought only some of the images, and then called back a few weeks later seeking to purchase the rest, according to the lawsuit. The Philadelphia-based buyer promised to pay Ogunsanya more in future if they turned out to be worth "more than you and I think they are," Ogunsanya maintained in court papers.

Ogunsanya said he learned the photos were Arbus' work only from a November 2007 article in The New York Times, which noted that they were to be displayed in a Los Angeles gallery in February and auctioned in New York on April 8. Representatives of the auction house, Phillips de Pury & Co., did not immediately respond to a telephone message early Friday.

The photographs are likely worth "hundreds of thousands" of dollars, according to the lawsuit.

Arbus, who committed suicide in 1971, is best known for her often disquieting images of circus performers, transvestites and other marginalized people. Her archives were recently given to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

She was the subject of a 2006 film, "Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus," starring Nicole Kidman and Robert Downey Jr.