Eric’s Note: Stephen DiRado is based in Worcester, MA. and has been exhibiting his photographs since 1983. He is a Photography Senior Lecturer in the Studio Arts Program in the Visual and Performing Arts Department at Clark University. Stephen has also recently received the prestigious Guggenheim fellowship to continue his photographic projects. In addition, he has finished his film “Summer Spent,” a personal documentary about recording beach goers on the island of Martha’s Vineyard on a large-format camera.
The emergence of the shopping mall during the later part of last century was like heaven opening many doors for a healthy middle-class to venture. As a subject it was under the radar of artists, accept for possibly George Romero’s cult film Dawn of the Dead in the late 70s, where zombies roamed about in a suburban mall in Pennsylvania. Shopper’s World, in Framingham, Massachusetts was located just miles from where I grew up. My parents loved shopping there, but I was emotionally terrorized with all of its multilevel ramps, dead end corridors, multiplex cinemas and endless parking lots.
