Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico
1941, printed 1980
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
gelatin silver print
Dimensions
overall: 38.2 × 49.4 cm (15 1/16 × 19 7/16 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Virginia B. Adams
Accession Number
1986.3.1
Art Historical Context
Behold *Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico*, one of Ansel Adams's most celebrated photographs, captured in 1941 and printed as a gelatin silver print in 1980. This striking black-and-white image depicts a dramatic moonrise over the small village of Hernandez in New Mexico, featuring the silhouetted San Jose de la Laguna Mission church, graves in the foreground, and distant mountains bathed in ethereal light. Adams, a pioneering landscape photographer and co-founder of the f/64 Group, masterfully seized this fleeting moment while driving along a highway, transforming a spontaneous vista into an ic...
About the Artist
Ansel Adams
Ansel Adams, born on February 20, 1902, in San Francisco, California, grew up as the only child of Charles Hitchcock Adams, a businessman and astronomy enthusiast who tutored him at home, and Olive Bray, with whom he had a distant relationship. A hyperactive child prone to illness, Adams struggled in formal schooling and was educated by private tutors and his father until graduating from eighth gr...