Think Outside the Envelope

The task seemed incredibly daunting: Condense 130 years of outstanding American photography to 20 images that convey both the artistic and journalistic aspects of the medium, shrink them to an inch-and-a-half by an inch, put them all on one page and hope they sell.

That’s what the U.S. Postal Service has done with its new stamp series, “Masters of American Photography,” an arresting display of 20 black-and-white photographs that includes Civil War soldiers by Timothy O’Sullivan, an Andre Kertesz cityscape, an Edward Steichen image of a lotus and a Garry Winogrand street scene.

The finely reproduced images chronicle not only the history of photography, but the history of the country, with compelling images of war, the Depression and westward expansion. Though past stamps have recognized the medium of photography or individual photographers, this is the post office’s first true celebration of American photography. The plate, which debuts at the new stamp price of 37 cents (the rate takes effect Sunday), has been generating buzz since its release earlier this month.

“I think it’s wonderful,” said Weston Naef, curator of photographs for the J. Paul Getty Museum. “These images are both classic on one hand and adventuresome on the other. It’s obvious that this selection was not based on some capricious decision, but was very carefully chosen.”

Guiding the selection was Peter Bunnell, McAlpin professor emeritus of the history of photography at Princeton University and former curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, who is considered the country’s leading scholar of American photography. As the stamps have slipped into circulation, Bunnell has been pleasantly surprised at the reactions. Some fans have asked him to autograph the sheet, and a woman stopped him in the supermarket to tell him she was “overwhelmed and fascinated” with the images.

“You can publish all the magazines and books in the world, but you probably aren’t going to reach millions of people with this kind of authoritative pronouncement,” Bunnell said from his home in New Jersey. “Presumably this might have some effect on a lay public that never thought about photography. Also, in an era when everything is in color, this reminds you that the first visual images were black and white, which is a truly abstract form.”

Although these tiny images will only live a short time on pieces of mail, Naef believes their impact will loom large: “From that picture of Daniel Webster to those that chronicle the expansion of the West, the art of photography and the destiny of America overlaps in a cultural and political way more here than any other place on Earth.”

As with all postage stamps, the road from concept to sticky-back stamp sheet was a long one. Bunnell said he was tapped in 1996 to work on the set, part of a series that included American artists and illustrators. “I used monographs,” he explained, “to stimulate my thoughts and move beyond the most obvious images” that still represented the photographers’ work.

He wanted the final slate of images to “not be perceived as simply art photography, but to convey how they work journalistically, as documentation. We were interested in photography in the context of history. That’s why we went with Eugene Smith’s picture from World War II, and Walker Evans’ imagery of the Depression.”

There are other artful visions of the past as well. The works range from James VanDerZee’s “My Corsage” to a Man Ray abstract rayograph(a contact print), from Ansel Adams’ “Sand Dunes, Sunrise” and Edward Weston’s “Two Shells” to an intimate portrait of author Agnes Rand Lee and her daughter Peggy, titled “Blessed Art Thou Among Women,” by Gertrude Kasebier.

As if summing up the history of American photography in 20 frames weren’t difficult enough, Bunnell made his job even tougher by setting tight parameters for what he wanted in the final mix: male and female photographers; a representation of various regions of the country; a mix of portraits, landscapes and still-lifes; and photographers who made “important contributions as picture makers, not necessarily as people who were involved in photography.” That’s why noted Civil War photographer Mathew Brady was dropped in favor of a daguerreotype by Southworth and Hawes from the same era. Bunnell felt Brady was more significant as an entrepreneur who hired others to shoot.

As he moved to more modern times, he also had to observe the unbendable postal rule about commemorating only those who had been dead at least 10 years. There were also pragmatic considerations. Some estates and heirs denied permission to use works. Certain shots turned to indecipherable mush when shrunk, and others didn’t fit into the vertical format.

Then there was the problem of arranging the images chronologically and harmoniously on the sheet. “If you shifted one photograph with another, they affected each other,” said Derry Noyes, the graphic designer and art director who worked closely with Bunnell. “I put a white border around the images because I wanted them to feel like little pictures within a frame, and I didn’t want them to compete with each other.”

Noyes chose a “quiet, understated” font for the photographers’ names and the denomination, then placed them on the stamps as unobtrusively as possible.

She selected one additional image, attributed to William Henry Jackson, that complements the rest. It appears in the “selvage,” an area to the right of the stamps, and shows a photographer with a sizable camera positioned precariously on Overhanging Rock above Yosemite Valley. The photo, Noyes said, shows not only “the master at his art,” but also reveals the lengths photographers went to to obtain their images.

She, too, is hopeful that the sheet will spark interest in outstanding American photography: “It’s great,” she said, “that the old masters are starting to get appreciated.”