© Boaz Halaban
Gail Albert Halaban
Photographer

Gail Albert Halaban, who lives and works in New York, began photographing when she was 6, when she made a camera for her first grade science fair. She holds an MFA from Yale University.

Her art explores the tension between public and private life, what is seen by all, and what is hidden. The series Out My Window is a collection of images taken through and into windows in New York City, she acknowledges unspoken voyeurism and exhibitionism, tells us to admit we all do it, and then pushes us to confront the hope, isolation and other emotions that lie behind the gaze.

The pictures seem intrusive, but are nearly all posed. The residents are collaborators and their apartments are lit specifically to make these pictures, which explore a defining urban experience: becoming secretly familiar with the neighbors’ most intimate moments.

In the end, the process of producing this series of images is a kind of performance that serves as a remedy for the symptoms that they portray: by ringing on doorbells, Albert-Halaban helps bring anonymous neighbors into each others’ lives. The set-up of the camera and the staging of the resultant photograph become an occasion for new friendships.

[Edwynn Houk Gallery]

Gail Albert Halaban
Photographer

Gail Albert Halaban, who lives and works in New York, began photographing when she was 6, when she made a camera for her first grade science fair. She holds an MFA from Yale University.

Her art explores the tension between public and private life, what is seen by all, and what is hidden. The series Out My Window is a collection of images taken through and into windows in New York City, she acknowledges unspoken voyeurism and exhibitionism, tells us to admit we all do it, and then pushes us to confront the hope, isolation and other emotions that lie behind the gaze.

The pictures seem intrusive, but are nearly all posed. The residents are collaborators and their apartments are lit specifically to make these pictures, which explore a defining urban experience: becoming secretly familiar with the neighbors’ most intimate moments.

In the end, the process of producing this series of images is a kind of performance that serves as a remedy for the symptoms that they portray: by ringing on doorbells, Albert-Halaban helps bring anonymous neighbors into each others’ lives. The set-up of the camera and the staging of the resultant photograph become an occasion for new friendships.

[Edwynn Houk Gallery]

  • Salvatore Siciliano: Martyrs
    Oct 20 – Nov 18, 2023
    Jergon
    Berlin, Germany
    Martyrs is a double premiere: Salvatore Siciliano’s first solo exhibition and JERGON’s first curated painting exhibition. Siciliano’s works exude his background as a choreographer and connoisseur of the pulsations of bodies, their tensions, their power, and their potential. These bodies are always excessive, always beyond themselves, coming together in a subversive encounter between the figurative and the abstract, between drawing and painting, between joy and sacrifice. (more…)
  • Mai Ling: Not Your Ornament
    Sep 15 – Nov 12, 2023
    Secession
    Wien, Austria
    Founded in Vienna in 2019, Mai Ling is an artists’ collective and association dedicated to facilitating dialogues about experiences of racism, sexism, homophobia, and any kind of prejudgment, particularly against Asian FLINT* (women*, lesbian, inter*, non-binary, and trans*). Rooted in solidarity against patriarchal and racial discrimination, the group offers a protected space and growing network to give voice to the many individuals affected by such discrimination and foster new forms of collaboration. (more…)