COVER N. 489 - USA

Postmark: Ansel Adams First day of Issue Yosemite National Park, CA 95389 15.052024

Posted on ?; Received on the 11th July 2024

_________________________________________________________________________________

Tri-X forever, wrote Kevin on the subject line when answering my message acknowledging receipt of the beautiful FDC he sent me, with stamps from the USPS issue celebrating the work and legacy of the man who is absolutely revered by any aspiring, full fledged, amateur or professional photographer, with an interest in landscape photography.

Tri-X, a code word for the cognoscenti.. we're talking photography here - even if Ansel probably seldom if ever used the quintessential high ASA (notice I didn't use ISO)  film from Kodak known for its deep blacks, great tonal range and push processing capability.

Ansel Adams. The man behind the zone system, the photographic genius (and skilled pianist) who gave us all those absolutely incredible photographs taken at places such as Yosemite National Park or mount McKinley or New Mexico, so rich in dynamic range and depth of detail that they have to be seen to be believed.

And I have seen a good lot of them. 

I think I've mentioned it before here, but I'll do it again since it is quite an appropriate story: quite a number of years ago, I stayed at La Coruña, Galicia, North of Spain, with my wife and daughters for a couple of days, during one of our summer holidays. 

While driving through the town, I saw  some boards on the front of a building advertising a retrospective exhibition of the works of Ansel Adams.... I couldn't believe my eyes. Ansel Adams was my absolute photographic idol and this was an opportunity I could not let go. So the very next day I was again at the venue to visit the exhibition with my wife, while our girls stayed at the camping park or somewhere else, because I remember I couldn't convince them to come.

150 first generation Ansel Adams originals were on display.. everything from "Moonrise over Hernandez", to "Moon and Half Dome" or  "Tetans and Snake river"..... all the jewels I had only seen reproductions of in magazines and books (the internet was in its infancy, yet) were now there in large format, in front of my eyes..... and man, were they even grander than I had imagined them to be.... the contrast, the absolutely amazing palette of greys, the intricate detail, the harmony of the compositions....oh Joy!....

Thank you so much Kevin!, I was very , very happy to add this cover to my collection.

Ansel Adams (1902 - 1984), to me, is to photography what Keith Jarrett is to music. They both originated an expression style that became a sort of heritage, a legacy, that is carried on and on by others that came after them. But it is not the average photographer of piano player (and again, Adams was a very good pianist, although I have no idea if Keith ever dedicated some time of his to photography) who can make the harmonics of these geniuses works resound inside their own. You have to be extremely competent; you have to be extremely good to emulate the dynamics, the harmonies, the  irreproachable compositions, for both these guys built their work on tons of technical knowledge.

Photography is mainly a two stage process, which calls on two very different sets of skills. Step 1, you capture a photograph with your camera; step 2, you develop it. This holds true even in the present days of digital photography but today post-production is done in real time, with rather full proof software and mistakes can be easily corrected time and time again.

Back then, it was totally different. Most times, the man in the developing lab was a total different species than the man who pressed the shutter.  

Great photographers were and, to a point, still are, 2 in 1. Adams was probably 4 in one, because not only he came from the days when large format photography was shot with glass plates (I don't know, but he might even have shot with wet plates in the beginning), transitioning then to large format film and polaroids, but he also totally dominated all this different processes, to the point of devising, in collaboration with another photographer, Fred Archer,  his own system of capturing and developing: The zone system.

This theoretical framework  implied a profound knowledge of the way emulsions reacted during the exposure and development procedures, in order to obtain a pre-defined gradation across  11 luminance values from pure white to pure black.

Adams was also a  staunch conservationist and this is thoroughly transmitted by his photographs, where you very seldom see people... just nature, at its supreme best; just photography at its supreme best too!

Honouring Ansel Adams name and legacy on the 40th anniversary of his passing, USPS, on 15MAY2024 issued a mini-sheet comprising 16 "Forever USA" self-adhesive stamps reproducing 16 of Adams best known photographs.

On the cover two of these stamps can be seen: "Dunes, Oceano, California" (1963) on the left and "Half Dome,  Merced River, Yosemite National Park, California" (1938)

Postage was completed with another three stamps, two of them also dominated by the photography theme. From the left top corner:

- 15 cent "Photography" stamp issue on 26JUN1978. Illustrated with a folding large format camera and some other items related to photography like an eye magnifier, a lamp and some filters.;

- 3 cent stamp commemorative of the centenary of the birth of George Eastman, the founder of Kodak, issued on 12JUL1954;   

- USPS began issuing a series dedicated to American Design in 2002. Over the years additional stamps were issued and others  were reprinted featuring new dates on their frame. Such is the case for the 1 cent stamp illustrated with a Tiffany lamp, which was first issued in 2003, although the one on the cover is a  2008 reprint.

The stamps not pertaining to the Ansel Adams issue are obliterated with a normal day mark issued at Yosemite National Park, just like the First Day Postmark