16 Iconic Ansel Adams Photos to Be Featured in Set of USPS Stamps

The United States Postal Service (USPS) is set to release a series of 16 Forever Stamps that feature the timeless work of photographer Ansel Adams this spring.

Originally revealed last winter, the USPS announced this week that the series will debut on May 15. Linns reports that the stamps will be released at an opening-day ceremony in Yosemite National Park, one of Adams’s favorite locations.

“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,” the USPS says.

“As evidenced by the striking images in this collection, Adams devoted much of his career to the advancement of photography as a fine art. He wrote and photographed extensively for the Sierra Club Bulletin, exhibited his prints at museums across the country, gave lectures on photography’s artistic merit, taught thousands of students in workshops, and helped create the first museum photography department, at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.”

Each stamp in the series will feature one of Adams’s beloved photos, including Half Dome, Merced River, Winter, Yosemite National Park, California (1938), The Golden Gate and Bridge from Baker Beach, San Francisco, California (c.1953), Del Monte Forest, Pebble Beach, California (1964), Monument Valley, Arizona (1958), and Dunes, Oceano, California (1963).

Photography often finds its way onto USPS stamps. In 2024, the USPS will release several stamp series featuring photography including a set of five new horse stamps, a set of hummingbird stamps based on the photos of Ben King, and two new Webb telescope photos: Cosmic Cliffs and Pillars of Creation. Those last two stamps were announced earlier this year and are not the first time the USPS has partnered with NASA, as the two came together in 2022 to release a 20-stamp sheet of photos captured by Webb.

Last year, the USPS featured a set of gorgeous photos captured with microscopes and special photographic techniques to showcase otherworldly images of some of the smallest components of life.