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From February 5 - March 28, 2009, a selection of Gail Albert Halaban's photographs from her Photo Urbanism fellowship were on view at Robert Mann Gallery. Read the press release.
Out My Window is Gail Albert Halaban's second solo exhibition at Robert Mann Gallery. The project was created for her Photo Urbanism fellowship, an ongoing program of the Design Trust to encourage the examination and re-imaging of New York's public spaces through photography. Halaban's work has been reviewed and featured in publications including New York Magazine, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. The artist attended the Rhode Island School of Design, Brown University,and Yale University, from which she received a Master of Fine Arts in Photography.
In her own words, Halaban described the intent of Out My Window to "create a series of portraits in private spaces across the five boroughs that reveal the transformation of New York City's landscape. The view can serve several different functions throughout the series, signifying location, class, or the fleeting nature of time. I will specifically look at how the landscape of 2007 is vastly different than the landscape that preceded it, and how different the landscape will become." While adopting the visual language of photojournalism and its anthropological approach, Halaban also finds precedence in the characters of Edward Hopper's universe, using architecture to suggest the inner psychology of her subject and the subtle interactions of urban life.
In a world framed by windows, there is both an intimacy and remoteness in the proximity of so many strangers. Though the archetype of the photographer training her lens on her neighbor is easily associated with the voyeurism of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, the experience Albert Halaban records is far less menacing. In as much as we are aware of our display, the city is also on display to us. Window and camera are inextricably bound in the framing of a world.