Walter Benjamin in the Mall of America

What is the relationship between the spectra of a Parisian convent, kidnapped heroines in gothic castles and loafer covered passages of Paris? What is common among visitors to the Universal Exhibitions, players captivated by the neon lights of Las Vegas and onlookers fascinated by shopping malls? All are caught up in enclosed spaces saturated with fantasy, phantasmagoria. Trying to decipher these spaces as interpreting a dream, by superimposing their actual genesis and their mythical oppositions. For phantasmagoria contains within it the elements of its own negation.

This series of photographs was taken over three days I spent at the Mall of America in 2012. The final color images are printed on Fuji Flex with an ultra-high gloss finish which matches the visual aesthetic of the mall. When the images are displayed they are hung together in groups based on their location as well as various visual patterns that emerge both inside and outside of one of America's largest shopping malls.

Marc Berdet, who has studied and published several definitive books about Walter Benjamin, provided me with detailed maps of the mall and its various traffic patterns and suggested motifs from abroad as I spent three days photographing in and outside of the mall in Bloomington, Minnesota.