Shopping Malls

There was a time when the mall was more than a place to shop.

It was where you went when you didn't really have anywhere else to go.

You met your friends there. You wandered the halls on Saturday afternoons. You went on your first date. You got your first job. You bought a record, ate terrible food, played games at the arcade, waited for your parents, and somehow managed to spend an entire day without ever needing a reason to be there.

For a generation of Americans, the mall was part of growing up.

Today, many of those places are empty. Some have been abandoned. Some have been demolished. Others are being transformed into something entirely different.

This project is about photographing what remains.

I'm interested in the architecture and the decay, but I'm equally interested in the memories that those spaces still carry. An empty food court is still a food court. A shuttered department store is still the place where someone bought a wedding dress, a Christmas present, or their first pair of jeans.

These buildings may have stopped serving their original purpose, but the human stories haven't disappeared with them.

One day, many of these buildings will be gone.

The photographs will be what remains.