The phrase "uncanny valley" keeps popping into my head with these mall shots (a term used in CGI for the deep uneasiness of portrayals that fall just short of completely convincing).
It's as if there is no way to even take a straight photo; everything we see is making some point or other. Fascinating series!
Such places are so full of fakery, mirrors, what turn out not to be mirrors, twists and turns... it's disorienting - and I sometimes wonder whether this may be a deliberate ploy to befuddle the consumer?
Richard, twenty or more years ago there was a fad here of "factory" supermarkets. The interiors were raw, the cans were placed on the shelves in their boxes, everything about the place was low and nasty--except the prices. Those were quite high. The marketing strategy was to make the place so crummy-looking that the consumers just *knew* they must be getting great bargains, except they weren't.
The Montreal underground was quite different. Marketing everywhere, and I didn't think to go look at the price of merchandise, but the food courts--no intelligent human would buy food in the food court of an American mall--had terrific food. Very different from here.
4 comments:
I really thought there is a woman in the first photo. I wanted to ask you what she is doing there. Dancing? Practising golf?
Then I realised ...
Don't feel bad, Martina. That was my reaction when I saw the shot in Bridge--and I took the picture!
The phrase "uncanny valley" keeps popping into my head with these mall shots (a term used in CGI for the deep uneasiness of portrayals that fall just short of completely convincing).
It's as if there is no way to even take a straight photo; everything we see is making some point or other. Fascinating series!
Such places are so full of fakery, mirrors, what turn out not to be mirrors, twists and turns... it's disorienting - and I sometimes wonder whether this may be a deliberate ploy to befuddle the consumer?
Richard, twenty or more years ago there was a fad here of "factory" supermarkets. The interiors were raw, the cans were placed on the shelves in their boxes, everything about the place was low and nasty--except the prices. Those were quite high. The marketing strategy was to make the place so crummy-looking that the consumers just *knew* they must be getting great bargains, except they weren't.
The Montreal underground was quite different. Marketing everywhere, and I didn't think to go look at the price of merchandise, but the food courts--no intelligent human would buy food in the food court of an American mall--had terrific food. Very different from here.
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