Most of these photos were taken in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when I was working in Burlington, Iowa, as a newspaper photographer.

My daughter Sarah, who was about two, and I would often spend our evenings at the mall waiting for her mother to get off work at the J.C. Penney Store.

I became fascinated by how the shopping mall fit into the culture of small city America. Enclosed malls were fast becoming the commercial centers of most cities.

Burlington was typical. The Downtown was rapidly losing its businesses to the new mall in West Burlington.