Sunday Stamps: Photography

Today's Sunday Stamps theme is 'Photography'.

Photos are used often on stamps, but photography as an art in itself seems to be rarely used in the tiny traveling postage pictures.
Fortunately I found stamps dedicated to three Dutch photographers. Who, by the way, have been traveling all-over the world to take their pictures.

Charlotte Dumas (Vlaardingen, 1977) is one of my favourite Dutch photographers, because of her photos of animals, portrayed in a personal way. I had never heard of her, neither seen her work, until PostNL issued this stamp sheet of 'animals with a story' in 2015. In the selvages you can find the names of the animals, and read some more info (in Dutch).



In 2014 the five 'children's welfare stamps' ('Kinderpostzegels') stamp sheet shows pieces of art, depicting children. The artwork is part of the collection of the Rijksmuseum (the National Museum). Four stamps show paintings, and the fifth one, twice as much larger than the other four, show this photo:



The photographer is Maya Pejić (The Hague, 1935). The boy pictured is making some amazing manoeuvre on his skateboard in the Vondelpark in Amsterdam.
Some more information (in Dutch) about the photographer you can find on the website of the IISG (International Institute of Social History), and many more pictures you can find via google.

An other stamp sheet, completely dedicated to a photographer, is this sheet, issued last year in honour of Ed van der Elsken (Amsterdam, 1926 - Edam, 1990).
Personally I wasn't that interested in these stamps, due to the photos and the tiny size of these, but reading something more about the background (alas in Dutch only ,too) they became interesting for me though.




See more stamps on the theme 'photography' on today's Sunday Stamps blog and via the links mentioned there.

Sunday stamps: Telephones

Today's theme of Sunday Stamps is 'Anything you wish'.
It was hard to think of one theme, because there are so many beautiful stamps and so many themes to choose.
First I thought of musical instruments, always a favourite theme, and Hawwa inspired me by this blog post (it's this year's theme for Europe!) and by sending beautiful Spanish stamps showing string instruments, like these ones.

But then I thought that 'Musical instruments' might have been, or will be one day, a theme for Viridian's Sunday Stamps already. As have been/will be themes like 'Postage stamps on stamps', 'Mailboxes' and other popular themes for snail mail lovers like us.
So it would be good to choose something else. Finally I found it:

Telephones!

These three stamps have been issued in 1994 'for the elderly':



The present main Dutch telephone company ('KPN') used to be part of one national government-owned enterprise, which also included the Mail company: PTT (Posterijen, Telegrafie en Telefonie: mail, telegraph and telephone).
In 1989 the PTT became independent of the government, and the name changed into KPN (Koninklijke PTT Nederland: Royal PTT Netherlands), including PTT Post and PTT Telecom as main companies.
The state was the only owner until KPN went to the stock market in 1994. In 1998 there was a dissociation: the mail went on in a company named TPG, later TNT, now PostNL, and the telephone branch as KPN.
These stamps have been issued for the aforementioned milestones in 1989 and in 1994:





Here you can see a complete Telephone:



And how times have been changing! Nowadays most telephones have lost their 'line'.
This stamp, issued as part of a 10-pieces stamp sheet for the 100th anniversary of the Dutch Open Air Museum, is titled 'youngsters with a smartphone':