Moon and Half Dome, Yosemite Valley, California

1960, printed 1980

Ansel Adams

Artist, American, 1902 - 1984

From a low vantage point, we look up at the rugged face of a tall, almost sheer rock formation with the moon above in this vertical black and white photograph. Filling most of the composition, the rock formation is slightly rounded along the top but dips down to a jagged ridge to our left. Strong light from the upper right creates deep shadows across its iron-gray surface, which is textured with long vertical streaks of white and lighter gray. An almost-full moon hovers in the otherwise clear, charcoal-gray sky above it, near the top of the image to our left of center. Formations outside our view cast deep shadows along the right edge of the photograph. A smattering of white across from us, low in the image, suggest snow on the rock there. A dark mass close to us is an ink-black silhouette rising from the lower left corner and angling off the left edge, near the upper left corner.
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Artwork overview


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Murray H. Bring, Washington, DC; gift to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1988; acquired by NGA, 2015.

Associated Names

Inscriptions

signed by artist, bottom right below image in graphite underlined: Ansel Adams; on verso of mat, center stamped in black ink: Photograph by Ansel Adams / Museum Set Edition / Route 1 Box 181 Carmel, California 93923 / [line] / [line] / Negative made [line] Print made [line] / Identification number [line]; by unknown hand, along lines, in black ink: Moon and Half Dome / Yosemite Valley, California / [Negative made] 1960 [Print made] 1980 / [Identification number] 2308; by Corcoran Gallery of Art, bottom right corner in graphite: 1988.71

Wikidata ID

Q64144952


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