Final Project

  Ever increasing in size and availability and filled with stores specializing in everything from shoes and clothing to baseball cards and cell phones, the shopping mall has become a staple of the American landscape.  When starting this project I had planned to seek out the different groups of people that call the mall home.  I was seeking out the bands of teenagers that linger in the food court or arcade with nothing better to do or the tired shopping companions abandoned in the various seating areas too tired to continue.  What I wasn’t expecting to find was that the mall is largely filled with those too young to even be there on their own.

  Small children dragged along by their parents can be found in all corners of the mall.  We can find them pretty much everywhere strapped into strollers or kept close by the clutch of a hand.  They’re in the food courts and department stores, the corridors and seating areas.  Their frequency throughout the mall is a nod to how young we begin acclimatizing our youth to cultural norms.  And, it’s interesting that this is not the first generation that will be part of mall culture for their entire lives but just one of many.