Universal Mall, Warren
Date1972
Mediumgelatin silver print
DimensionsImage: 13 1/2 × 20 3/8 inches (34.3 × 51.8 cm)
Matted: 24 × 20 inches (61 × 50.8 cm)
Credit LineGift of Helen Levitt.
Object number1997.8.4
Copyright© Judy Linn.
The images and text contained on this page are owned by Telfair Museums or used by the Museum with permission from the owners. Unauthorized reproduction, transmission or display of these materials is prohibited with the exception of items deemed “fair use” as defined by U.S. and international copyright laws.Label TextWith a singular visual charm, Detroit-born photographer Judy Linn documents life in its specific and uniquely American time and place. Everything in Linn’s work is steeped in vernacular informative value—the way people dress, individual hairstyles, artifacts of home and domestic life, the way her subjects interact with the lens and each other. Linn moved to New York in the mid-1960s and photographed her friends Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe while they were still young and emerging artists living at the Chelsea Hotel.
The photograph titled Universal Mall, Warren is part of Linn’s series called Edge of Detroit from 1972-73, where she explored suburban life in the first ring of white suburbs around the city. At the time she had moved back to Detroit and was working for a local publication, The Detroit Area Weekly. In Universal Mall, Warren, Linn’s lens takes aim at a group of people within an automobile but vantaged from the outside looking in. The protagonists are driving past an image of the cratered surface of the moon, obviously reproduced in tile on an exterior wall of the mall. Through association, they become as vicarious, drive-through space tourists. Linn’s embrace of the immediacy of the snapshot balances with her artistic sensibilities towards formal compositions.Subject Matter28582 Dequindre Road, Universal Mall, Warren, Michigan, United States of America
