Moon and Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, 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

  • Medium

    gelatin silver print

  • Credit Line

    Gift of Virginia B. Adams

  • Dimensions

    overall: 49.4 x 36.4 cm (19 7/16 x 14 5/16 in.)

  • Accession

    1986.3.35


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Virginia B. Adams, Carmel, CA; gift to NGA, 1986.

Associated Names

Bibliography

1979

  • Yosemite 1979, 115.

1985

  • Alinder, James, and Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr. Ansel Adams: Classic Images, The Museum Set. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Boston, 1985: 74.

Inscriptions

lower right on mount in graphite: Ansel Adams

Wikidata ID

Q64144868


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