Photographer Linda McCartney Celebrated With USPS Stamp Collection

The U.S. Postal Service will commemorate the art and life of photographer Linda McCartney with a stamp collection featuring her images. | Image credit: USPS

Photographer Linda McCartney will be honored by the United States Postal Service (USPS) with a series of postage stamps featuring her nature and still life photography.

The stamps honoring McCartney will be released on September 25 at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, where a first-day-of-issue ceremony will celebrate the photographer and activist. The stamps will be available for purchase at USPS branches across the country on the same day.

McCartney rose to prominence by photographing some of the most memorable musicians of the 1960s, producing images that were relaxed, intimate and natural. Her 1968 portrait of Eric Clapton made her the first female photographer to have her work featured on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. Among her favorite subjects were her husband Beatles musician Paul McCartney, their children, and animals, as well as small moments from everyday life.

The USPS collection contains 20 stamps, five of which feature examples of McCartney’s photography, including images of sunflowers and a teapot. Derry Noyes, an art director for USPS, designed the stamps and stamp pane. The selvage of the stamp collection features a black-and-white self-portrait of McCartney behind her camera.

A Photographer Who Broke Into a Male-Dominated Field

Born Linda Eastman in Scarsdale, New York, in 1941, she rose to prominence in 1966 after photographing the Rolling Stones while working as an editorial receptionist at Town & Country magazine. Editors were so impressed by her work that they turned her photographs into a feature. It became the first of many magazine assignments, establishing McCartney as a chronicler of 1960s music culture.

She met her future husband Paul while on assignment in London in 1967. They married two years later.

Mccartney was one of the most respected rock photographers of her era, known for candid and intimate portraits of musicians and for establishing herself in a field dominated by men. However, her marriage to Paul often overshadowed her photography, and she was later better known to some as a Beatle’s wife than as a photographer. Paul later acknowledged that their high-profile marriage had made it harder for her to receive recognition on her own terms.

“I always used to joke that I ruined Linda’s career,” Paul McCartney, told The Guardian in an interview in 2019. “She became known as ‘Paul’s wife’, instead of the focus being on her photography. But, as time went on, people started to realise that she was the real thing. So, yeah, she eventually did get the correct reputation, but at first it was just blown out of the water by the headline-grabbing marriage.”

Paul told The Guardian that audiences began to recognize the quality and authenticity of McCartney’s photography, while also highlighting her relaxed approach to photographing musicians.

“Linda put you at your ease. Some photographers, you’re very aware that you’re having a picture taken,” Paul said. “But she had such a relaxed attitude that she’d get a picture of Jimi Hendrix, but he’d be yawning in it. He felt comfortable enough to yawn, she felt confident enough to take a picture of him yawning, knowing he wouldn’t mind.”

McCartney’s photographs have been exhibited throughout the United States, as well as at the Royal Photographic Society and the Victoria and Albert Museum in the United Kingdom. She later became a founding member of the pop-rock band Wings with Paul and an influential figure in the vegetarianism movement. Linda McCartney died in 1998 at age 56 in Tucson, Arizona.

The Forever stamps will be sold in panes of 20 and will be available at U.S. Post Offices and on usps.com.