Dec 07, 2006 - Sale 2097

Sale 2097 - Lot 452

Price Realized: $ 38,400
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 30,000 - $ 40,000
ADAMS, ANSEL (1902-1984)
"Moonrise, Hernandez, N. M." Silver print, 15x19 1/4 inches (38.1x48.8 cm.), signed by the photographer on mount recto and with an Ansel Adams hand stamp on mount verso (with the title and date filled-in in an unidentified hand). 1941; printed 1970s
Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

John Szarkowski, Ansel Adams at 100 (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2001), pl. 96.

Andrea Gray Stillman, ed., Ansel Adams: The Grand Canyon and the Southwest (Boston, 2000), frontispiece.

Karen E. Haas and Rebecca A. Senf, Ansel Adams in the Lange Collection (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), pl. 37

James Alinder and John Szarkowski, Ansel Adams: Classic Images (Boston, 1985), pl. 32.

Therese Mulligan and David Wooters, Photography from 1839 to Today, George Eastman House (Koeln, 2000), p. 643

Martha A. Sandweiss, Masterworks of American Photography: The Amon Carter Museum Collection (Birmingham, 1982), pl. 125

Ansel Adams (Morgan & Morgan), pl. 63.


One of the most widely recognized photographs of the 20th-century, Ansel Adams's "Moonrise, Hernandez, N. M." was made on a late autumn evening, after an unsatisfying day photographing for the U. S Dept. of Interior and U. S. Potash Company of New Mexico. Driving along with his son and assistant, Adams looked out from his car window to discover the special quality of light, where day is transitioning to night, and a perfect composition. He quickly assembled his 8x10-inch view camera and tripod on the hood of his car. His technical expertise allowed him to shoot the photograph quickly, without the aid of a light meter reading.

Adams, the consummate darkroom professional, drew from his decades-long experience of printing this difficult negative to craft stunning prints. In the 1970s he interpreted the negative so that the prints had a rich dark tonal quality in the sky, which was counterposed by the wispy white clouds just below it. And, perhaps, reading the photograph symbolically, the light areas of the snow-capped mountain tops seem to glow in much the same fashion as the white crosses and headstones in the cemetery.