New Ansel Adams Stamp Series Includes Iconic Image Of Grand Tetons

A renowned photo taken by legendary photographer Ansel Adams that’s already an iconic image, the Tetons and the American West, has found another public gallery to hang — in the top righthand corner of envelopes as the latest in the series of “Forever Postage Stamps” issued by the U.S. Postal Service.

His “The Tetons and the Snake River” photo taken in 1942 was one of 16 added last month to the USPS “Ansel Adams Forever” stamp series, all featuring the iconic black-and-white landscape photography of a man who dedicated his life to conservation and sharing stunning scenes of the American West preserved on film.

On Wednesday morning, standing at the very spot Adams set up his tripod to snap that famed photo 82 years ago, a small gathering commemorated the new stamp series.

Grand Teton National Park celebrated the occasion with an unveiling of a pane of all 16 stamps, many of them immortalizing various national parks. GTNP Acting Deputy Superintendent Robin Martin and Postmaster Aleicia Dickson from Moose, Wyoming, (the nearest post office to the site) were among those on hand for the dedication.

Martin said the stamps offer a chance to “experience the wonder of the American West through the lens of one of America’s most iconic photographers: Ansel Adams.”

Legendary Photographer

Adams’ most famous work was probably “Monolith, The Face Of Half Dome, Yosemite Valley (1927)” where his ashes were spread after his death. Yosemite was his first love and it shows in his incomparable catalogue of work there. But the Snake River image is right up there in his top 10.

The dramatically lit “The Tetons and the Snake River” features the Snake River winding its way underneath the towering Teton Range. Taken in the spring of 1942, the Tetons are still covered in snow. A threatening sky looms overhead, but a patient Adams obviously waited until the sun was able to peek through the clouds to get the contrast in light he was famous for.

The photo was done on the government’s dime. It was part of an ambitious project commissioned by the National Park Service on behalf of the Department of the Interior for its new building in Washington, D.C.

After beginning that work in fall 1941, where Adams took his famed “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico,” the photographer took a break over winter and resumed again in May the following year.

It was sometime in May or June when Adams took the Snake River shot. He was not the best record-keeper when it came to recording the dates of his photographs.

Shortly after the photo was taken, the feds abruptly ended the 180-day project when the U.S. entry into World War II dried up funding. Adams argued the point, believing America needed the inspiration his photos could provide, but ultimately surrendered 225 small prints to the DOI, but held on to the 229 negatives.

Adams realized the photographic material was legally the property of the U.S. government, but he did not trust the National Archives could or would properly care for the delicate gelatin silver prints.

While the mural project never materialized, Adams did manage to release at least two of those photos in a book published in 1950 by his wife Virginia Best. “The Tetons and the Snake River” graced the cover of the publication “My Camera in the National Parks,” which featured 30 black-and-white images taken in national parks.

Adams himself described the photographs as “symbols of that deep emotional and spiritual experience in the presence of nature to which increasing millions of people every year are turning.”

The photographer-turned-environmentalist viewed his work as a salve to a booming nation in the postwar period.

Ansel Comes Of Age

Adams (1902-1984) himself is an interesting study.

One of Adams' earliest memories was experiencing the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Just 4 years old, Adams wasn’t hurt in the initial quake but was tossed face-first into a garden wall during an aftershock three hours later.

The accident left him with a badly broken nose that was never reset. As a result, it remained crooked and necessitated mouth breathing for the rest of his life.

Adams contracted Spanish Flu in 1918 and had an arduous recovery. He would battle frequent illness and bouts of hypochondria all his life.

The world-renowned photographer quite as easily could have become a classical pianist instead of a celebrated shutterbug. That was the path he was on as a youth until the age of 14.

Adams got his first look at Yosemite National Park and thought it “glorious.”

His father gifted him his first camera on the trip, an Eastman Kodak Brownie box camera, and he was hooked.

By the 1920s, his career as a professional photographer was underway. By the end of the next decade he was a known commodity and his work was highly sought.

Countless hours in the darkroom is where Adams perfected his “zone system,” a complicated method of rendering the perfect monochromatic print using a calibrated scale of brightness from Zone X (black) through shades of grey to Zone X (white).

“You don’t take a photograph, you make it,” Adams was famously quoted as saying.

Why black and white? Adams felt color could be distracting and could potentially divert an artist’s focus on creating a true masterpiece.

Lick It, Stick It

Derry Noyes, art director with the USPS, designed the 16-stamp series using existing photographs. The U.S. Postal Service’s first-day-of-issue event for the Ansel Adams Forever stamps was May 15 in Yosemite National Park.

On Wednesday, Grand Teton got its due.

Customers can buy the stamps through the Postal Store or at their local post office. Hurry, though. Forever Stamps will increase in price from 68 cents to 73 cents by July 17.

Contact Jake Nichols at jake@cowboystatedaily.com

Jake Nichols can be reached at jake@cowboystatedaily.com.