ADAMS ANSEL (1902 1984) Moonrise Hernandez New Mexico

Sale 2208 - Lot 180

Price Realized: $ 28,800

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 30,000 - $ 40,000

ADAMS, ANSEL (1902-1984)
"Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico." Silver print, 15 1/2x19 1/2 inches (39.4x49.5 cm.), on a Crescent board mount, with Adams's signature, in ink, on mount recto and his early Carmel hand stamp, with the title and negative number, in ink, in an unknown hand, on mount verso. 1941; printed late 1960s

Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

From the collection of Elsa Leigthner; to John Boland.

Ansel Adams: Classic Images, 32.
Photography in America, 130-131.
Photography from 1839 to Today, 643.
Masterworks of American Photography: The Amon Carter Museum Collection, 125.
Ansel Adams in the Lane Collection, 37.
Ansel Adams (1972), 63.
Ansel Adams at 100, 96.
Ansel Adams: The Grand Canyon and the Southwest, frontispiece.

Ansel Adams's "Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico" is his most famous and revered photograph. The subject matter of the picture, a cemetery whose white crosses seem to be lit from within, is richly symbolic and "…punctuates the meeting of heaven and earth." A serene and waxing moon, the presumed source of the glowing light, appears in the background.

The picture was taken on November 1, 1941. For some time, the actual date of the creation of the image was debated at length by Adams, who carefully documented the technical process of the image, but could not recall when he shot the photograph, claiming it was sometime between 1941-1944. A scientist at the High Altitude Observatory, Boulder, Colorado, determined the date and time based on the moon's position in the sky.

The story associated with the picture is legendary. After a less-than-successful day in the field with his son and an assistant, Adams was driving home, when he "saw an extraordinary situation--an inevitable photograph! I almost ditched the car and rushed to set up my 8x10-inch view camera . . . but I could not find my exposure meter! The situation was desperate: the low sun was trailing the edge of clouds in the west, and shadow would seem to dim the white crosses." Adams had pre-visualized the image, managing to capture the picture both before sunset and the light irrevocably shifted by quickly calculating the appropriate necessary exposure. The light changed before he could take a second image.

One of the most widely reproduced images of the twentieth century, the print has a dramatic tonal range reflecting the content of the image. Adams was the inventor of the Zone System, a photographic technique used to determine the widest range of photographic print's tonality. A consummate technician, he was in the best position to manifest the relationship between how he visualized a subject and its final form as a photographic print.