Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

''Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico'' is a
black-and-white photograph Monochrome photography is photography where each position on an image can record and show a different ''amount'' of light, but not a different hue. It includes all forms of black-and-white photography, which produce images containing shades of n ...
taken by
Ansel Adams Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association of photographers advoca ...
, late in the afternoon on November 1, 1941, from a shoulder of highway US 84 / US 285 in the unincorporated community of Hernandez, New Mexico. The photograph shows the Moon rising in a dominating black sky above a collection of modest dwellings, a church and a cross-filled graveyard, with snow-covered mountains in the background. Adams captured a single image, with the sunset lighting the white crosses and buildings. Because Adams did not date the image, attempts have been made to determine a date from astronomical information in the photograph. It is one of Adams' most popular works.


Creation

In October 1941,
Secretary of the Interior Secretary of the Interior may refer to: * Secretary of the Interior (Mexico) * Interior Secretary of Pakistan * Secretary of the Interior and Local Government (Philippines) * United States Secretary of the Interior See also

*Interior ministry ...
Harold Ickes hired Adams for six months to create photographs of lands under the jurisdiction of the
Department of the Interior The United States Department of the Interior (DOI) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government headquartered at the Main Interior Building, located at 1849 C Street NW in Washington, D.C. It is responsible for the mana ...
, for use as mural-sized prints for decoration of the department's new
Interior Museum The Interior Museum is a museum operated by the United States Department of the Interior and housed at the department's headquarters at the Stewart Lee Udall Main Interior Building in Washington, D.C., on the first floor. When the Interior Museum ...
. Adams was accompanied by his young son Michael and his best friend
Cedric Wright George Cedric Wright (April 13, 18891959) was an American violinist and a wilderness photographer of the Sierra Nevada (U.S.), High Sierra. He was Ansel Adams's mentor and best friend for decades, and accompanied Adams when three of his most fa ...
on a long road trip around the west. They came upon the scene while traveling through the Chama River valley toward Española in late afternoon on November 1 (see section "Dating", below); accounts of what transpired differ considerably. The initial publication of ''Moonrise'' was at the end of 1942, with a two-page image in ''U.S. Camera Annual 1943'', having been selected by the "photo judge" of ''U.S. Camera'', Edward Steichen. In that publication, Adams gave this account: Adams' later accounts were more dramatic. In his autobiography, completed by his assistant and editor Mary Alinder shortly after his 1984 death, the traveling companions encountered a "fantastic scene", a church and cemetery near Hernandez, New Mexico, and pulled to the side of the road. Adams recalled that he yelled at his son Michael and at Wright to "Get this! Get that, for God's sake! We don't have much time!" Desperate to capture the image in the fading light, they scrambled to set up the tripod and camera, knowing that only moments remained before the light was gone. Adams had given a similar account in his 1983 book ''Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs''


Dating the image

Beaumont Newhall, a photographer, curator and friend of Adams, was curious that Adams did not know the date of the photograph. While Adams remembered that the photograph was taken in the autumn, he had variously given the year as 1940, 1941, and 1942—despite the picture having been published in 1943–1944. Newhall wondered if the astronomical information in the photograph could provide the answer, so he approached David Elmore of the High Altitude Observatory in
Boulder, Colorado Boulder is a home rule city that is the county seat and most populous municipality of Boulder County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 108,250 at the 2020 United States census, making it the 12th most populous city in Color ...
. Focusing on the autumn months of 1941 through 1944, Elmore found 36 plausible dates for the image. Elmore determined a probable location and direction for the camera alongside the highway. Using that location information, he then plotted the Moon's apparent position on his computer screen for those dates to find a match. Elmore concluded that ''Moonrise'' was taken on October 31, 1941, at 4:03 p.m. Adams thanked Elmore for determining the date and used that date in several subsequent publications, including his 1983 book ''Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs'' that used the date but rounded the time to 4:05 p.m. Dennis di Cicco of '' Sky & Telescope'' magazine read about Elmore's results and tried verifying them. He entered the position, direction, and time into a program that displayed the Moon's position, but the resulting position did not match the ''Moonrise'' image. He was intrigued by the discrepancy, and after working intermittently over the next ten years, including a visit to the location, concluded in 1991 "that Adams had been at the edge of the old roadbed, about 50 feet west of the spot on the modern highway that Elmore had identified". His calculations determined that the image was taken at 4:49:20 p.m. on November 1, 1941. He reviewed his calculations with Elmore, who agreed with Di Cicco's result. Elmore had been misled by his computer monitor's distortion with an additional slight discrepancy in Adams' coordinates. In 1981, the IBM PC's CGA display did not have a 1:1 pixel aspect ratio; plotting software would have to compensate for that aspect ratio to make an isotropic plot.


Reception

Art historian H. W. Janson called the photograph "a perfect marriage of straight and pure photography". Pre-1970 prints are very rare as the negative is hard to work with. Adams remade the negative, heightening the contrast to make high quality reprints easier to produce. The photograph became so popular and collectible that Adams personally made over 1,300 photographic prints of it during his career.


Art Market

The fame of the photograph grew when a 1948 print sold at auction for $71,500 in 1971 ($ in ); the same print sold for $609,600 in 2006 ($ in ) at a Sotheby's auction. A mural-sized print of the same photograph sold for $930,000 at
Christie's Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie (auctioneer), James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, at Rockefeller Center in New York City and at Alexandra House in Hong Kong. It is ...
New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...
in October 2021. Peter Bunnell's print of ''Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico'' was the highest priced photograph of the April 2023
Phillips Phillips may refer to: Businesses Energy * Chevron Phillips Chemical, American petrochemical firm jointly owned by Chevron Corporation and Phillips 66. * ConocoPhillips, American energy company * Phillips 66, American energy company * Phil ...
Photography auction for an above-estimate $381,000. Bunnell was gifted the large format print directly from Adams in August 1959 after they had become friends.https://www.phillips.com/detail/ansel-adams/NY040123/203


See also

*
List of photographs considered the most important This is a list of photographs considered the most important in surveys where authoritative sources review the history of the medium not limited by time period, genre, topic, or other specific criteria. These images may be referred to as the most i ...


Notes


References


External links


Ansel Adams on capturing ''Moonrise Over Hernandez'' (Video Footage)The Market for Ansel Adams and ''Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico''
* ttp://sam.nmartmuseum.org/view/objects/asitem/People$0040621/6/primaryMakerAlpha-asc?t:state:flow=54644269-8aed-43f8-a056-b32735cfad2b ''Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico''at New Mexico Museum of Art
Site of ''Moonrise'', circa 2000
*http://www.hctc.commnet.edu/artmuseum/anseladams/details/moonrise.html using Elmore's date
Ansel Adams: A Biography by Mary Street Alinder
date and ownership {{Ansel Adams Photographs by Ansel Adams Photographs of the United States 1941 in New Mexico 1941 works 1941 in art Works about the Moon History of Rio Arriba County, New Mexico 1940s photographs Landscape photographs