Looking at these photographs today, they feel like a particularly fitting metaphor for the state of the store in 2020.
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Through Lawless’s lens, we see empty retail spaces, completely devoid of people husks of stores with cracked windows, frozen escalators – and even the occasional glimpse of nature, in the form of sprouting weeds breaking through the civilized facade. “Looking at these photographs today, they feel like a particularly fitting metaphor for the state of the store in 2020” In his Black Friday: Abandoned Malls series, he traveled around the US to document “ dead malls ”, the name given to malls that have been vacated and neglected.
Changing trends in retail have seen malls across the US shuttered and fall into disrepair.Ĭontemporary American photographer Seph Lawless is known for his haunting images of abandoned places. That halcyon vision feels very distant now. To be in this sprawling place where it was like a fairy land. You felt like you were in Hollywood or something, because it was completely different from life in the suburbs, or even in the city where the focal point was, say, one department store. It was this larger than life, brand new experience. I remember it distinctly, going with my mom in a car to the mall to look around and shop. The writer Deborah Fallows, who has extensively chronicled America’s transforming towns and heartland, describes the once-glamorous experience of going to the Southdale Center, America’s first and oldest enclosed mall, when she was growing up: Once upon a time, they represented not just the future of shopping, but a fundamental reimagining of our shared urban space. Malls have defined the retail experience for decades. So it’s no surprise that we’re currently witnessing the fastest transformation in retail in history, as more and more businesses are rethinking the traditional ways of doing things and fully harnessing the potential of ecommerce. Retail is constantly changing: from stalls to malls, the way we shop is always evolving in tandem with cultural, economic, and technological shifts. Listen below, and read on for our companion post. On the podcast, Dee Reddy talks to writer Deborah Fallows about seeing the retail landscape of small-town America from the sky Director of City Design at the City of Melbourne Prof Rob Adams about urban regeneration for the retail space and the 20-minute city and Intercom’s SVP of Product Paul Adams about the development and future of ecommerce. This week, we’re putting the S in S.H.O.P. Over the next four weeks, we’ll be exploring some of the key topics around the past, present, and future of retail, looking at the technologies and behaviors that have enabled – and transformed – shopping as we know it.
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Welcome to S.H.O.P., our new series examining the changes in retail and commerce.