It all started when photographer Gail Albert Halaban鈥檚 daughter Zoe turned one in 2005, and her neighbours from across the street sent balloons and flowers to celebrate. She trained her lens on opposing windows, putting on full display the intimate, unguarded moments of people in their homes. But it鈥檚 not a voyeuristic exercise. Instead, the protagonists are fully complicit in the making of what are 鈥 in fact 鈥 carefully staged images of their private lives, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy.
Behind the work lies what Albert Halaban calls a 鈥渃raving to connect鈥 in an increasingly impersonal world. 鈥淚 feel like there鈥檚 this magic that happens when you can bring this gap between a window space, and it鈥檚 a way we can connect with people from all over the world without going very far,鈥 Albert Halaban said at her New York home.
Her project Out My Window has flourished to encompass more than 15 cities and an upcoming Aperture Foundation book on various locales in Italy that will be her second in the series. There鈥檚 even a play in the offing that riffs on the conversations between people who may have watched each other grow up and age for years without ever meeting until Albert Halaban brought them together.
The narrative behind these vignettes imbued with the tragicomic nature of the human condition is deliberately left open to interpretation. In every case, the windows serve more as gateway than boundary, with dramatic lighting inspired by the meticulous approach of Bernice Abbott. 鈥淲e鈥檝e all been living in solitary confinement in front of our screens, and if we just looked out the window, not only would we be meeting our neighbours, but we鈥檇 be seeing the world because there鈥檚 such diversity,鈥 said Albert Halaban.
Meeting strangers and then connecting them with one another is a daunting task, one made more complex by the cultural norms of the various communities Albert Halaban has visited, from New Yorkers to聽 Istanbulites, Buenos Aires porte帽os and Amsterdammers. 鈥淚n Paris, people were totally against it in the beginning鈥 and would say 鈥渢hat鈥檚 got to be illegal, the tax man will come get me if I let you photograph my stuff,鈥 she recalled. 鈥淭hen when it became hip and cool, people were totally into it.鈥
Olivia Hampton
Gail Albert Halaban: Out My Window. George Eastman Museum, Rochester, New York. Until 1 January. For more information, click .
Credits:
1.聽Gail Albert Halaban Out My Window. 漏 Gail Albert Halaban
2.聽Gail Albert Halaban(American, b. 1970). Rue Jouye-Rouve, Paris-20e, 2013. Inkjet print. 漏 Gail Albert Halaban
3.聽Gail Albert Halaban(American, b. 1970). Rue de Douai, Paris-9e, 2013. Inkjet print. 漏 Gail Albert Halaban
