USPS issues five Linda McCartney photography stamps at Museum of Modern Art

The U.S. Postal Service issued five Linda McCartney Forever stamps in New York City on 25 September 2026, with a first-day dedication at the Museum of Modern Art. The pane presents five photographs from McCartney's artistic portfolio: a horse, sunflowers, a glass teapot, a yellow carnation in a vase and cherries. Together, the designs introduce her photographic work to everyday mail while recognising a career that also encompassed music, animal-rights advocacy, vegetarian publishing and environmental concerns. The stamps went on sale nationwide in pressure-sensitive adhesive panes of 20.

Linda McCartney was born Linda Eastman in Scarsdale, New York, in 1941. She entered professional photography during a period of rapid change in popular music and visual journalism. In 1966, while working as an editorial receptionist at Town and Country magazine, she obtained an assignment to photograph the Rolling Stones. The opportunity helped establish her in a field where access, timing and the ability to work unobtrusively were crucial. She soon became known for photographs that captured musicians with an intimacy different from formal publicity portraits.

Her work became closely associated with the music culture of the late 1960s. In 1968, her portrait of Eric Clapton appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, making her the first woman photographer to receive a cover credit on the publication. Her subjects included prominent artists and bands, but the new stamps deliberately look beyond the best-known rock photographs. By choosing a horse, flowers, household glassware and fruit, the pane highlights her attention to ordinary objects, natural forms and quiet moments.

The five selected images create a varied but coherent miniature exhibition. The horse introduces an animal subject and reflects McCartney's longstanding affection for animals. The sunflowers and yellow carnation show two approaches to flowers: one abundant and outward-facing, the other contained within the intimacy of a simple vase. The glass teapot transforms a domestic object through light and transparency, while the cherries provide a compact study of colour, form and arrangement. Reduced to stamp size, each photograph retains a distinct visual identity while contributing to the rhythm of the full pane.

Derry Noyes, an art director for USPS, designed the stamps using McCartney's photographs. A black-and-white image of Linda McCartney standing behind a camera appears in the pane's selvage, the marginal area surrounding the stamps. This supporting portrait identifies the person behind the five views and turns the complete pane into more than a repeated arrangement of postage. Collectors retaining the pane intact preserve both the individual photographs and the contextual image of the photographer at work.

The stamps are printed in five designs within a pane of 20, giving four examples of each photograph. USPS lists them as First-Class Mail Forever stamps, meaning each remains valid for the prevailing one-ounce letter rate. The pane is not intended to be divided for individual retail sale, an arrangement that encourages collection of the complete composition. Ashton Potter (USA) Ltd. printed 10 million stamps by offset. The stamps are vertical and use cyan, magenta, yellow and black, with block tagging applied to nonphosphored paper.

The technical format provides several areas of interest for modern United States specialists. Each stamp has an image area of 27.559 by 36.068 millimetres and an overall size of 31.115 by 39.624 millimetres. The complete pane measures 241.554 by 182.880 millimetres. Plate markings use the letter “P” followed by four single digits, while the front margin carries the inscription “Linda McCartney • 1941–1998 • photographer • musician • animal rights activist”. The reverse includes descriptive text, the USPS identity, barcodes and a plate-position diagram.

McCartney met Paul McCartney while working on assignment in London in 1967. After t