The value of the individual in a capitalist society is as a consumer. Identity is shaped by what one buys. Status is determined by purchasing power. The act of shopping has become a temporary salve of instant gratification, a means of expressing repressed desire, and within the malls of America, an escape into the unreal.

This installation of photographs (large prints accompanied by postcards) examines The Mall of America as a tourist attraction that is a context for the commodity. My intent is to question and reveal the nature of our desires as they are reflected and directed in the space of the mall and in the character of the fetishized commodity. As geographer Jon Goss says, “Only by acknowledging that in our material society our dreams and desires are transformed into wants for commodities will we be able to materialize our visions of authentic life in social form rather than project them onto objects. By embracing and understanding our dreams, we might, like the subject of psychotherapy, come to understand the ‘true’ object of our repressed desires”.