Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art

About this Work

Fritz Kaeser presents a long view of the Franciscan church of San Xavier del Bac. Recalling Ansel Adams's famous Moonrise Hernandez, New Mexico (1941), the mission nestles in the landscape. Like Adams,with whom he studied at the San Francisco Fine Arts Center in 1946, Kaeser explored the dramatic possibilities of combining God's presence as embedied in nature with his symbolic church on earth. This spiritual quality is heightened by the strong tonal contrast of the glowing white of the church, cross, and tombstones against the vast blackness of the mountain range. Many other photographers, including Adams, depicted the interior and exterior of this striking building, but few captured more beautifully the "White Dove of the Desert."