USPS to Release Ansel Adams Stamps
The US Postal Service is set to release a sheet of 16 stamps featuring the legendary photography of Ansel Adams.
Ansel Adams made a career of crafting photographs in exquisitely sharp focus and nearly infinite tonality and detail. His ability to consistently visualize a subject — not how it looked in reality but how it felt to him emotionally — led to some of the most famous images of America’s natural treasures including Half Dome in California’s Yosemite Valley, the Grand Tetons in Wyoming, and Denali in Alaska, the highest peak in the United States.
No pre-order links yet, but the stamps will be available on May 15. (via @anseladams)
P.S. I was just poking around the official Ansel Adams site and ran across this photo I’d never seen before of a woman behind a screen door. Really wonderful.
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I love buying stamps and think the USPS is amazing. My only gripe is the lack of information provided when you buy stamps. I just picked up some gorgeous Chief Standing Bear stamps last week and had to look him up on my own. USPS has wonderful info that I wish they would publish on the back of the page of stamps. I'm sure printing text on the back of what is effectively a page of stickers raises all sorts of production issues I'm not aware of, but it's a missed opportunity to educate the public about all sorts of cool/important things in a fun and analog way.
On the topic of unexpected/rarely seen Ansel Adams photos, keep an eye out for the book "Zone Eleven." Edited by artist Mike Mandel, it creates a contemporary photo book from deep cuts in the Adams archive.
https://www.blind-magazine.com/news/mike-mandel-remixes-the-photographs-of-ansel-adams/
I find the idea of Ansel Adams' photos reproduced as tiny stamps to be hilarious! If I had to think of a major photographer who's work was intended to be viewed as huge prints, Adams would be top of the pile.
That said, I love the grid. Reminds me a bit of Bernd and Hilla Becher's work.
He wasn't printing large until the end of his life (and 16x20 are the "large" ones) - if you see a show of his prints that he made from his classic era (30s-50s), they are pretty modest in size.
I love US Stamps - was an avid collector when I was younger and am now getting back into it. This and the Dungeons & Dragons set (availability to be announced) are my two editions that I will be purchasing.
For a while I was getting the Philatelic catalog that they publish several times a year. It's free and you can order it on their website, which I did when I saw this post. It's a very nice publication and I enjoy perusing away from my screen.
Back in the '80s, I worked for Varian Associates. The Varian brothers were friends with Ansel Adams. When the company had its 50th(?) anniversary, every employee was given a set of two Adams photos, nicely mounted on poster board. The same 2 photos for everyone. So all my work friends, including my fiance', had the same artwork in their homes. It was kind of funny, and made those photos sort of prosaic to me. I'm sorry now that I don't still have them but I'm a minimalist and physical objects don't follow me around very long.
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