The archaeology of today’s urban regions need not be excavation-based. One trick allows the illusion of memory through photographic tools.

Here are three photographs taken just yesterday, at an under-leased, small suburban mall awaiting reinvention. A mixed use redevelopment lost momentum with the recession, and what is left is an in-between place.

In this venue, imagery of the in-between collapses time, and enhances empty—and lonely—spaces, suggesting ghosts of strollers and shoppers from not so long ago.

I suggest that local photographs can accentuate, in your midst, an Ostia Antica—the ruins of the abandoned seaport of ancient Rome—now isolated from the sea.

This is important, because accelerating history through imagery can add to our sense of immediacy, in search of the best ways to reinvent the urban, suburban and exurban environments around us.

All images composed by the author.