Figure 1 – Memento mori, detail on a eighteenth century gravestone, Concord, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Memento mori is reflection on death.  A couple of weeks ago I spoke about photographing everyday things that are becoming obsolete.  Then I read this past week that the British government was selling its remaining 20 % share in the Royal Mail.  This is a nod to modernism if ever I heard one.  The establishment of the Royal Mail was an important part, in the nineteenth century, of what historian Paul Johnson has referred to as “the birth of the modern.” So really shouldn’t be a surprise to find ourselves a century and a half later redefining the modern.  The drones are coming, and you can look at your local postal person, mail boxes, and mail delivery trucks with a certain sense of nostalgia.

It all came home to me this week, when I had to mail a letter at work.  We are a very technology-forward office and I grumbled a bit at how difficult it was to produce the letter in the first place. The use of paper at the office is eschewed with a certain modernistic, almost religious, zeal – much like the crusades of the Middle Ages. But after resorting to bringing in printable labels from home and figuring out just how to position them correctly in the printer, I did accomplish the task at hand.. Yes, I found the printer under a layer of neglectful dust.  I did not however find an admin to do this for me. He/she is also rapidly become an anachronism in the modern office. There it was in my hand a beautifully printed letter in a properly labelled envelope.

Stamps?  You want stamps?

So now to hoof it to the Post Office, where I found two talkative clerks. I was the only patron in there, and I was presented with a host of stamp options. These were not the beautifully engraved stamps of my youth, but much lesser objects that reflect the general trend to appeal to collectors, who need turn over to create elusive and false rarity. The general concept being that if people aren’t going to mail letters with stamps maybe someone wants to collect them.

It all, as I said, got me thinking – grumble, grumble, grumble. But then I it all dawned on me. I have been at my job for almost a year now, and this was the first time in a year that I actually needed to mail a letter. Bring on the drones. The epitaph, after all, is written on the eighteenth century gravestones all over New England: “Memento mori,” reflect on death.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 73 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE mode, 1/200th sec at f/8.0 2ith no exposure compensation.