The origin story of Ansel Adams’ iconic Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico has long captured the imaginations of photographers in search of the perfect shot as well as road trippers on the hunt for the most breathtaking lookout points. Adams made the 8-by-10-inch negative for Moonrise late in the afternoon of November 1, 1941. After an unproductive day photographing in the Southwest on behalf of the U. S. Department of the Interior and the U. S. Potash Company of New Mexico, Adams drove by the outskirts of Hernandez, New Mexico. Struck by the quality of light upon the tiny town and its attendant cemetery, Adams – with the help of his companions, son Michael and fellow photographer Cedric Wright – immediately pulled the car over to the side of the road and hastily assembled his equipment. Adams made his exposure in the dying light without the benefit of his light meter. Before he had the chance to make a second exposure, the sun sank behind a bank of clouds, and the light changed completely. A full account of the taking of Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico appears in many notable monographs, including Adams’ Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs (1983), Mary Street Alinder’s Ansel Adams: A Biography (1986), Andrea G. Stillman’s Looking at Ansel Adams: The Photographs and the Man (2012), and Rebecca A. Senf’s Making a Photographer: The Early Work of Ansel Adams (2020).

Adams printed Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, infrequently in the early 1940s. The negative, made quickly and under trying conditions, proved difficult to print. To produce a print that effectively reflected Adams’ visualization of the scene, he had to expend a great deal of time and energy in the darkroom coaxing the image through the printing process. In December 1948, Adams undertook the task of reprocessing the negative, re-fixing and washing it, and submerging it up to the horizon line in Kodak IN-5 intensifier. His efforts increased the density in the foreground, thus making it easier to print.

The creation of the negative itself is a story of exceptional technical prowess, while the printing of this image speaks to Adams’ evolving stylistic preferences. Whereas the impact of later prints depends upon stark contrasts, the present print evidences the photographer’s nascent, more subtle approach. It unlocks the sublime reality of the negative: a twilight scene bathed by the last rays of the setting winter sun, gauze-like wispy clouds clearly defined in the sky, and a full moon rising over a picturesque American landscape. Later prints – even those made in the mid-1940s – are wholly different, presenting a nighttime view that relies on the drama of high contrast developed in the darkroom.

The photograph offered here is one of the exceptionally few prints that Adams made in the early 1940s, and was undoubtedly made before the negative was intensified. Probably printed in 1942, this print exhibits the subtlety of tone, high level of detail in the sky, and open foreground that characterize Adams’ style before the 1950s and is one of the most significant prints by Adams to come to auction. Once Adams had newly processed the negative, he had also determined the exact cropping, print size, and board size he would use for this image for the rest of his career; the print offered here is slightly smaller in size than Adams’s later standard. Two prints of comparable early dating, scale, and presentation are in the following institutional collections: The Museum of Modern Art, New York, made circa 1942 for Beaumont Newhall and used by Edward Steichen for reproduction in the 1943 U. S. Camera Annual; and Princeton University Art Museum, also made circa 1942 for Adams’ patron David McAlpin.

It is no exaggeration to state that extant early examples of Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, are scarce. A handful of prints made before circa 1948 when Adams re-fixed the negative are in both private and institutional collections. Adams gave one such print to Fred Ludekins, his assistant and friend, and another to the photographer Pirkle Jones; these were both sold at Sotheby’s New York, the first on 7 April 1998 (Sale 7112, Lot 101), and the second on 17 October 2006 (Sale 8227, Lot 17). A print from the collection of George Waters, inscribed and dated ‘1948’ by Adams, is now in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. The earliest known Moonrise to come to auction sold for a world record for the image in the recent David H. Arrington Collection of Ansel Adams Masterworks at Sotheby’s New York in December 2020.