Why Moonrise over Hernandez?

[rdenney]

These differences between the sexes can lead to divorce and unsellable photographs. There is a subtle, and yet, powerful lesson to be learned here with Hernandez.

While I obviously don't disagree with your thesis, at least as something to consider and discuss, I'm not sure I see the connection with Moonrise. I suspect that photo earned its place and the top of the Adams sales heap long before women were as influential in the art sales world as they are today.

I don't seek out art to buy, but when I am confronted by it, I often become its champion. Thus, I'm usually buying art from its creator, rather than from a gallery owner. My wife, on the other hand, is well known in the local galleries and buys through them even when she knows the artist. She also has a background in sales and one thing I've discovered is good salespeople love to be sold things as much as they love selling things ("suckers for their own schtick" is the way I put it when I feel like skating out onto the thin ice). She often won't buy something without that sales interaction. I, on the other hand, usually decide to buy something, pay for it, and then stand around talking to the photographer about it and other things for an hour. I don't know if my approach is particularly masculine and hers is particularly feminine, but I can see with my own eyes the predominant gender in most retail shopping environments where decorations and art objects are sold.

If we buy into the notion that women are often the customers of art photography, then what do we do as photographers? It's easy for me--I'm an amateur and I make the photographs I want to make. Judging from my wife's reactions to landscape photos, however, she in particular appreciates bright colors, bold light, and the capture of dramatic ephemera such as rainbows. I don't think I could argue that her desires are particularly feminine.

As to the emotion of El Capitan, it's there for me. But the emotion is awe rather than warmth or intimacy, and the gender connection there seems plausible. That said, there is nothing warm or intimate about Moonrise, it seems to me. It is also a grand, dramatic landscape. The difference is that it captures dramatically ephemeral light. Is that particularly feminine? I don't really see how.

Where I see my wife's feminine response to photographs is when we go beyond landscape. She is far more attracted to pictures of animals than pretty rocks. Put an animal in any landscape, and she's right there. There is a bit of the ephemeral in that, but also a feeling of kinship--it makes the scene less forbidding. Is Moonrise less forbidding than Adams's other works? Again, I don't see it.

For the record, we have Half Dome, 1927, Aspens, and Dogwoods and Rain, Tenaya Creek on display in our house, two as posters and one as a Special Edition print. She won't let me take any of them down, and the first two are about as forbidding as anything Adams did, except maybe El Capitan and Clearing Winter Storm. Dogwoods captures that ephemeral light, it seems to me.

So, while I think my own differences from my wife in art buying support your thesis, when I really try to nail it down to the specific photos we have (even the ones I originally picked out), the only trend I can really identify is that she likes them better with animals, and she responds more readily to images with dramatically ephemeral subjects than I do, though I also respond to those. In the end, the only direction I think I could go as a photographer to appeal more to women (assuming my wife is representative, which I know she is not) would be to start taking "nature" rather than "landscape" pictures. Not gonna happen. A man has got to know his limitations.

I would definitely, however, develop a woman-sensitive sales strategy if I was selling my work.

Rick "who would hire his wife to sell his work" Denney

[Bill_1856]

So all you AA experts, tell me how many copies of moonrise did he sell?

I believe about 1300, most of them after the 1975(?) declairation that he was going to stop printing.
I've been thinking about the emotional aspect of the image, and have decided that the appeal is that it is so PEACEFULL! It is very quiet, like the end of the day when one is winding down, getting ready to sleep. Everything is in harmony, even the lenticular clouds are lying down as if to rest (not the dynamic thunderheads in so many of Adams' scenics).
It is like saying your prayers and being tucked into a warm bed, and kissed good night. I cannot think of any other image, either painting or photograph, which conveys this perfection.
"Now I lay me down to sleep...."

[Drew Wiley]

More of my two cents worth. I suspect that Moonrise sold so many more than some of
his other scenes because airhead collectors who didn't know what to buy weresteered that way. And at the time of his death, the figure I heard from good sources for the number of actual printing by himself was around 360. Prints were selling around 6K, then when he died a few auctions jumped up to 35K, 40K, then one 60K as I recall. So lots of folks decided to potentially cash in and the typical price dropped right back down to 6K. Supply and demand. Even at 300+ prints, that's a large number out there for a single vintage image.

[Eric Woodbury]

Among all photographic work, Moonrise is more unique than Ansel's Sierra Nevada work. A similar image of Hernandez has not been made -- the moon, the clouds, the unique light. And the brevity of the event adds to this.

[Merg Ross]

Prints were selling around 6K, then when he died a few auctions jumped up to 35K, 40K, then one 60K as I recall. So lots of folks decided to potentially cash in and the typical price dropped right back down to 6K. Supply and demand. Even at 300+ prints, that's a large number out there for a single vintage image.

I believe a 1948 print went for $360,000 at the Swann Auction in December and the sale of Pirkle Jones' print for $610,000 in 2006. Good for Pirkle; perfect timing!

[Drew Wiley]

1948? I wonder if that was before the neg was enhanced? Interesting.

[Stephen Willard]

So, while I think my own differences from my wife in art buying support your thesis, when I really try to nail it down to the specific photos we have (even the ones I originally picked out), the only trend I can really identify is that she likes them better with animals, and she responds more readily to images with dramatically ephemeral subjects than I do, though I also respond to those. In the end, the only direction I think I could go as a photographer to appeal more to women (assuming my wife is representative, which I know she is not) would be to start taking "nature" rather than "landscape" pictures. Not gonna happen. A man has got to know his limitations.

I would definitely, however, develop a woman-sensitive sales strategy if I was selling my work.

I really cannot articulate what women will buy definitively. I do not have any images with a human foot print in them so I can only speculate that Hernandez type images will sell well. I have had women buy images that I thought a women would never buy so you never really know. I think a few of those images were bought by women for their husbands which might explain why they were atypical. My aspens images are good sellers, but I just started really offering panoramic images recently, and they are generating a lot of interest. In fact, all of my sales for December were panoramic photographs framed out to 26x50" and of course everyone of them was purchased by a women. I suspect big panoramic photographs fit nicely over their couches.

The only definitive claim I can really make is that most of my sales were purchased buy women over the years. The rest is speculation based on plausible reasoning. Has anyone else experienced the same selling pattern of women buy art as I have?

[Jim Becia]

So all you AA experts, tell me how many copies of moonrise did he sell?

I had heard 1046. After some research, I found two different sources that come very close to this number. In his book, "400 Photographs," it states nearly 1000. This gallery, www.agallery.com/Pages/photographers/adams.html states 1041.

While he doesn't mention the number of "Moonrise" in his autobiography, he does mention that when he set a deadline for all orders of his photos for Dec. 31, 1975, he expected less than a thousand in the total order, instead the total was over 3000. It took him the next three years to print these. Jim

[Stephen Willard]

For the past three years I have been able to meet all of my expenses and have little bit left over, but it has not been easy as a one man operation.

Just for the record, I may have misspoke when I made this statement. I do not believe I will cover all of my expenses for 2009. I believe I will be close, but I will still be in the red.

[Michael Alpert]

It is also my belief that most galleries are owned and run by women, and that the art world is really driven more by women perceptions then men perceptions. Of course, this is a very board generalization and one can site many exceptions. . . . These differences between the sexes can lead to divorce and unsellable photographs. There is a subtle, and yet, powerful lesson to be learned here with Hernandez.

Stephen,

I haven't entered into this discussion previously because I thought you were trolling. Now I don't know whether you are trolling or not. After this statement, I hope for your sake that you are.

As I understand it, your question is: what appeals to people who are willing to spend a fair amount of money on an original photographic print (of a well-known image) but who are not especially involved with art. Well, that question is not too hard to address. One can say that many people want artistic work that they can live with (it needs to be pleasant and, in some sense, optimistic), it needs to be a work that they are already familiar with (Moonrise was a popular calendar image), and the work needs to bring prestige to them (it should look, somehow, expensive). Many people want the culture industry's greatest hits; the fact that they are not quite sure where those greatest hits originated is a secondary issue. Thank goodness that the artworld also includes many people who support values and interests that have more substance and more clarity. In any case, I don't think that your conception of masculinity or femininity, as it relates to specific images by A. A. or by anyone else, is even remotely relevant.