Everyone’s hometown has that spot where all the kids hung out. It could have been a diner, skating rink, or even a parking lot.
When I was a kid, the place to be was the mall. It was a social hub brimming with hormones where friends bonded over Froyo, couples broke up and got back together as frequently as The Gap changed window displays, and gossip flowed like Orange Julius. So I’d be heartbroken if I came home and found my hometown mall, once rich with the aroma of Cinnabon, had been closed down and was just sitting there like ghost town.
But after my sadness subsided, I have to admit, I’d be curious to see what it looked like now that it was abandoned.
This is the same kind of emotionally spurred impulse that Seph Lawless, the pseudonymous American-based photojournalist, felt when he returned to his hometown mall, found it abandoned, and covered in snow…
“Recently, I returned to the mall I grew up in to find it completely abandoned…”
“…And covered in snow,” said Seph Lawless.
“It was eerily quiet…”
“…And beautiful…"
"…As if the world had ended.”
"The snow began to fall through the broken skylights…”
“And as I looked up snow flakes gently fell upon my face.”
“It was then I realized…”
“…I was inside a gigantic make-believe snow globe.”
“I prefer absurdity over reason,” said Lawless, who is also an artist and activist.
“Because it's more honest.”
Lawless has a book about abandoned malls called, “Black Friday: The Collapse of the American Shopping Mall.”
Its a high quality coffee table / art photography book.
It is accompanied by Seph Lawless' travels photographing abandoned shopping malls in America.
The images are equal parts eerie, beautiful, and fascinating.
It’s interesting to see something so American and modern…
