Long before post offices became political flash points, this artist was photographing them

Welcome started her project, God Bless the USPS, long before the U.S. Postal Service became the politicized headline-maker it is today, swept up in the maelstrom of President Trump’s unfounded claims that mail-in ballots will ensure a fraudulent election. Her endeavor began as a love letter, so to speak. Her images, which she posts on Instagram with the handle @godblesstheUSPS, document the interplay between bureaucracy and community, formality and whimsy. “It’s structured and systematized, but it’s also people-powered,” she says of the Postal Service. “The interactions are so deeply human in such a mechanized space.”