Getty Museum
Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico
Creator
Ansel AdamsAmerican Photographer · 1902–1984
All works by this person →Ansel Adams was first trained in music, but in 1930 he gave up a career as a concert pianist to pursue photography. Although he began his career as a Pictorialist, Adams soon became an advocate of the sharp-focus, unmanipulated image. Along with Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston and others, he was one of the cofounders of Group f/64. The name derived from the smallest aperture of the camera lens, w
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- negative November 1, 1941; print December 16, 1948
- Medium
- Gelatin silver print
- Culture
- American
- Department
- Photographs
- Institution
- Getty Museum
Arguably Ansel Adams's most famous image, this photograph is titled *Moonrise* rather than *Sunset,* even though the moon technically does not rise in the sky. As a scholar noted: The factuality and, moreover, the meaning of the setting sun were rejected by him in favor of the expressive symbolism of the rising moon; of the shining luminescence ablaze with greatness in its primal mystery, dramatically isolated in the infinity of darkness. Instead of making an unmanipulated print from the negative, Adams selectively printed the sky black and the foreground dark in order to achieve a particular illumination and spiritual transcendence. The photographer's skill and vision transformed the tiny town of Hernandez, dotted with glowing white cemetery and church crosses, into a spectral landscape.
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