A Good Mail Day
Notes on mailboxes—
I’ve accumulated dozens of photographs of mailboxes, most taken within an hour’s drive from my home. The photographs in this series document moments when light and subject converge in a particular place, calling for attention, and infusing familiar scenes with meaning. Most come from rural routes and country roads, a few from small towns and cities, but none from subdivisions with mandated mailbox conformity.
These mailboxes sit on stoops. They perch on single poles before white picket fences. They line up at trailer parks and campgrounds. They welcome visitors to farms and old home places. They dot the sides of winding back roads and mark dead ends with no turn-arounds. Every home has a mailbox. And the mailbox sits as a testament to faith, as though we need to believe good news might arrive any day.
Mailboxes stand as a kind of sanctuary against change. Our conversations are now mostly by way of email and texting, but for all the connection the internet provides we are still often left lonely and lost and longing. Walking to the mailbox is a daily meditation for many folks. The quarter mile down the lane, along the wire fence nearly covered in poke weed, leads to the galvanized metal mailbox, where hope is delivered.
In my home, we race to see who can get to the mail first. Even though the mail is mostly junk, we live for the days when the mail has real handwritten letters and cards for us. We recall with joy the college acceptance letters, with solace the cards that came when my father passed away, and with gratitude the notes of encouragement that arrived when cancer made itself at home with us. Delivered directly to me by the Postal Service, thank-you’s and invitations along with postcards and letters keep me in good company. The miles between are dissolved by the simple act of raising the flag for outgoing mail.
When I stop and think about why I photograph mailboxes, the answer is fairly simple.
I guess I just like the idea of mail.
“I’ve always felt there is something sacred in a piece of paper that travels the earth from hand to hand, head to head, heart to heart.”
Post Script: I first began making and gathering pictures of mailboxes in 2016. Many of these photographs have lived on my hard drive in a special collection simply labeled mailboxes. Over the last 10 years, our system of mail delivery has experienced significant challenges. I wonder if there will be a time in the future when we no longer have mailboxes at all. One thing is for certain, the ways we communicate and stay connected are ever-changing. I don’t know if there will be a place for a handwritten letter, a phone call, or a heart-to-heart conversation. I hope so. In the meantime, I will continue to take editorial photographs of all that I see through my lens. Always with consideration for creative lighting, negative space, and thoughtful composition.
Perhaps offline will become the new online, and we will define our lives by means of time, effort, and authorship. I crave a return to more tactile, traditional mediums: film photography and prints as tools for capturing the human experience and curating with intention. Maybe we will shift to analog experiences like visiting museums, meeting at the theater, flipping through books, conversing over coffee, and even sending a handwritten card or letter. We might replace endless scrolls on social media as we seek an escape from the overwhelm and the clutter. Sometimes we just need to circle around and back.
