Gail Albert Halaban

Show at Howard Greenberg

2012-02-10T12:36:00.002-05:00

Italians Looking Into New Yorkers Windows

2011-12-13T14:24:00.004-05:00

Excited to see my pictures in the Italian Magazine, Internazionale.

Years Later

2011-12-05T12:38:00.003-05:00

It has been amazing to reconnect with people I have not seen in ages - part of my Years Later Project!

Germany!

2011-12-05T12:26:00.002-05:00

I am so excited to be part of a group show at the Flo Peters Gallery.
http://flopetersgallery.com/
A sneak peek at some of my new work!

Cover of the New York Times Magazine

2011-12-05T12:22:00.003-05:00

I loved seeing my picture on the Cover of the NEW YORK TIMES!!!!!! Thanks to Heidi and her family for sitting for the shoot!

Just Back from Gloucester

2011-12-05T11:53:00.003-05:00

I just got back from Gloucester, MA where I am working on a new project based on places Edward Hopper painted!

Family DInners

2011-12-05T11:51:00.003-05:00

I have been having a great time trying out recipes from the Family Dinner shoot I did for Real Simple!

Have a Heart

2011-12-05T11:48:00.003-05:00

Very excited to report that the Have a Hear Photography auction that benefits pediatric cardiology at New York Presbyterian Hospital raised over $50,000. It is a great hospital and I hope to spread the word to help as many kids as I can get the care they deserve! Thanks to all the donors! Great photographers donated work to auction of to raise money. The photo you see here is one of the 6 David Levinthal donated!

Show extended!

2011-08-08T15:54:00.002-04:00

I am excited to say that the show I am in has been extended to the fall so all of you who are on vacation have a chance to see it when you return!
NY TEMPORARY: The City Through Photography, Film and Video
21 June - 1 October 2011
Curated by Liam Davis and H P Garcia
NYCPMI MUSEUM
Address | Map
580 Eighth Avenue, 7th Floor
@ 38th Street

Davidson College

2011-02-11T11:20:00.003-05:00

I am in a great show at Davidson College - the collection of John MacMahon and Joel Von Ranson.
The new show, "People Places Power: Reframing the American Landscape," at the Van Every Gallery at Davidson College features a potent mix of large-scale photographs interpreting the relationships between humans, their buildings and their landscapes in 21st-century America.

Read more: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/01/28/2018090/photos-visit-terrain-of-beauty.html#ixzz1DfTshRtU

Tokyo

2011-02-11T11:17:00.002-05:00

I am excited to hear how great the response was to my work in the recent show in Tokyo:
Tokio Out of Place gallery's new exhibition, curated by the New York-based curator Mako Wakasa, is a group show of four photographers: Gail Albert Halaban, Lisa Kereszi, Mayumi Terada and Shellburne Thurber. Although very different in style, all the works reference the concept of interiors, real or metaphorical.

Tiger Mother

2011-02-11T11:09:00.002-05:00

My portrait of the Tiger Mother is being seen around the world! If you are in Italy, Portugal, France . . . check out the book Amy Chua wrote - it definitely makes you question different parenting styles. After reading it, I watched Mary Poppins and think I lean towards the spoonful of sugar method.

2010-04-14T15:28:00.000-04:00

Hanging (and flying with kids)

2010-04-14T12:13:00.002-04:00

I have had a great time recently - took a few days off from snooping into people's windows to do a great ad job - had kids flying for my camera! It was really fun!

Window Watchers in a City of Strangers

2009-11-12T13:50:00.003-05:00

My work is featured in today's New York Times article "Window Watchers in a City of Strangers"

Be sure to check out the audio slideshow.

Mom Culture Interview

2009-10-30T16:53:00.003-04:00

Mom Culture just posted an interview with me.

When did you realize you loved photography and at what moment did you realize you could do this professionally?

I have loved photography since my first grade science fair when my mom and I made a pinhole camera out of an oatmeal cereal box. I didn’t decide to do it professionally until after college where I was a pre-med student. I didn’t really think of it as a real job but my parents encouraged me to give it a whirl. I went to graduate school for an MFA instead of Med School.

Read the rest of the interview here.

Interview at Examiner.com

2009-07-02T13:38:00.003-04:00

Lorenzo Dominguez interviewed me back in March for Examiner.com. You can read the interview here.

Yossi Milo Gallery - Sexy and the City

2009-07-01T14:38:00.010-04:00

I will be in Sexy and the City, the upcoming group show at Yossi Milo Gallery. It is part of the citywide show "New York Photographs." For more information go to yossimilo.com

Sexy and the City

New York Photographs
July 9, 2009–August 28, 2009

Yossi Milo Gallery is pleased to announce Sexy and the City, a summer group show on view from Thursday, July 9, through Friday, August 28, 2009.

Sexy and the City shows the alluring, romantic and sometimes scandalous side of New York’s people and places. Capturing private, intimate moments and blatant displays of sexuality, these photographs span the decades from the 1940s to the present day, taken in landmark locations like the Brooklyn Bridge and in the quiet, out-of-the-way corners of the city.

From Alfred Eisenstaedt’s iconic image of a kissing couple in Times Square on V-J Day, 1945, to Nan Goldin’s drag queen on an anonymous New York street in the 1990s, from Garry Winogrand’s topless woman surrounded by a crowd in Central Park to the homosexual couples photographed by Alvin Baltrop in the seclusion of the West Side piers, Sexy and the City celebrates diverse views of New York City passion.

Among the artists featured in the exhibition are Merry Alpern, Will Anderson, Diane Arbus, Alvin Baltrop, Bruce Davidson, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Mitch Epstein, Louis Faurer, Leonard Freed, Nan Goldin, Gail Albert Halaban, Charles Harbutt, Lisa Kereszi, André Kertész, Arthur Leipzig, Leon Levinstein, Joel Meyerowitz, Duane Michals, Tod Papageorge, Frank Paulin, Anton Perich, Charles Traub, Arthur Tress, Weegee, Ryan Weideman, and Garry Winogrand.

This show is part of the citywide exhibition NEW YORK PHOTOGRAPHS. A number of galleries specializing in photography have joined forces to present over a dozen gallery shows this summer featuring views and perspectives on New York City. Other participating galleries include Bonni Benrubi, Danziger Projects, Deborah Bell, Edwynn Houk, Howard Greenberg, Hasted Hunt, Janet Borden, Laurence Miller, Pace/MacGill, Robert Mann, Julie Saul, and Yancey Richardson.

The New York Times - Art in Review

2009-07-01T14:30:00.004-04:00

From the New York Times:

Alfred Hitchcock's ''Rear Window'' comes readily to mind when you look at Gail Albert Halaban's large color photographs. Most depict tall New York apartment buildings viewed from a high window opposite.

Initially, Ms. Halaban's pictures resemble formal studies in which architectural grids create syncopating, all-over visual rhythms. Then you notice that there are people in some of the apartments. None of them are doing anything exciting. There is no sex or violence. But there is something compelling about being able to see into the private worlds of ordinary people. The voyeuristic, slightly melancholy effect recalls certain paintings by Edward Hopper.

Ms. Halaban also took pictures of people while in their apartments with them, and these have a poignant intimacy. They resemble photographs by Philip-Lorca diCorcia. One breathtaking example shows a woman wrapped in a bath towel sitting on the edge of her bathtub and gazing out through glass walls over the city.

While the photographs shot from distant windows suggest a kind of surveillance, in fact Ms. Halaban collaborated with her subjects and asked them to pose and position themselves in their homes for the camera. So they are a form of portraiture. Scale is important too. Because the people are so tiny in proportion to the whole picture, there is an expansive effect. And for the same reason, there is a sense of social amplitude: so many buildings, so many people, so many stories in the big city. KEN JOHNSON

The New Yorker - March 16, 2009

2009-07-01T14:26:00.002-04:00

From The New Yorker:

GAIL ALBERT HALABAN
Like so many New Yorkers, Halaban can’t help staring into her neighbors’ windows, but she’s made an art of it. Most of her big color photographs are views across streets, alleyways, or airshafts into apartments. A man plays with his dog; a young couple cuddle with their baby; the solitary stand in Hopperesque isolation. The fact that Halaban has staged these moments doesn’t make them any less resonant of the contradictory impulses of metropolitan life: the desire to connect and the need to be left alone. Voyeurs will be frustrated by Halaban’s polite scenarios, but she’s playing the good neighbor. Through March 28. (Mann, 210 Eleventh Ave., at 24th St. 212-989-7600.)

Artnet - Evacuation of the West

2009-07-01T14:17:00.005-04:00

From Charlie Finch's review of the recent MoMA show, "Into the Sunset: Photography’s Image of the American West":

"One would never know from this narrow selection that Gail Albert-Halaban snapped an energetic and widely praised series of the young women of Los Angeles, a few years back. That series alone, with its barriastas, Malibu socialites, teen drifters and blue collar Moms, in its range of emotions and

experiences puts the whole curation of "Into the Sunset" to deserved shame."

You can read the full review here.

WNYC Radio Interview

2009-07-01T14:12:00.004-04:00

WNYC interviewed me and posted an audio slideshow with me about my Out My Window Project. Watch it at wnyc.org.

Elle Decor - Report from NYC: Love the neighbour

2009-07-01T13:17:00.005-04:00

Elle Decor posted about my Out My Window project back in March. Read it here.

The New Yorker - January 8, 2007

2009-07-01T13:11:00.003-04:00

GAIL ALBERT HALABAN

Halaban, a photographer whose previous work concerned groups of wealthy, social young women at their leisure, has followed similarly privileged women into motherhood. The Results-big boffo color pictures that look like tina Barney crossed with Lauren Greenfield- are more emphatic, more satirical, and more complicated than before, perhaps because they reflect their subjects' ambivalence toward nagging new responsibilities. Halaban can be heavy-handed (one woman on a rattan chaise holds up a flash card for her son to read; "WANT," it says, pointedly), but she stages these images so deftly that you can believe every one, even if you'd rather not. Through Jan. 6. (Mann, 210 Eleventh Ave., at 24th St. 212-989-7600.)

The New Yorker - March 31, 2003

2009-07-01T13:05:00.004-04:00

GAIL ALBERT HALABAN

The Margaret Mead (or at least the Tina Barney) of upscale, thirtyish Los Angeles women - those who gather on a Tuesday afternoon to compare engagement rings and have private yoga lessons at home. Albert-Halaban documents ritual and banality alike; her pedicured friends spend time at the gym, at the salon, in the shoe stores, and in pottery classes. One woman with a Xanax-tranquil expression, shown without friends, shares a bag of cherries with her young daughter in a fortresslike enclosure by the pool. In another image, an innocuous game of Scrabble is made slightly menacing by the presence of the word N-E-S-T-E-R-S on the board. Through April 12. (Meyerowitz, 120 Eleventh Ave. 212-414-2770.)

New York Times - This Stage of Motherhood

2009-07-01T12:43:00.003-04:00

March 2003 review in the New York Times.

GAIL ALBERT-HALABAN, ''About Thirty,'' Ariel Meyerowitz, 120 11th Avenue, at 20th Street, (212) 414-2770 (through April 12). Like Tina Barney and Nan Goldin, Ms. Albert-Halaban uses her camera like an anthropologist. The expertly made pictures here focus on the domestic and recreational lives of West Coast career women, all in their 30's. Shopping for shoes, comparing diamond rings, doing yoga exercises, tending their children, her subjects visibly enjoy the privileges of their class, yet one senses throughout the series a certain anxious ennui (Johnson).

Aperture Magazine - Friends With Money

2009-07-01T12:29:00.003-04:00

This Stage of Motherhood was featured in the Winter 2006 issue of Aperture Magazine. You can read the pdf here.

The Sister Project Interview

2009-07-01T12:17:00.004-04:00

The Sister Project interviewed me as part of their Galleries series. Read it here.

Upper East Side Neighbors

2008-12-03T12:09:00.000-05:00

Looking into Riverside Park

2008-05-23T13:13:00.004-04:00

28th Street Factory

2008-05-23T13:11:00.000-04:00

Jill with tea cup

2008-05-23T13:10:00.001-04:00

Chelsea Glass House

2008-05-23T11:16:00.003-04:00

Click above for audio interviews.

Lou From Anita's Window

2008-05-23T10:49:00.005-04:00

Neighbors across the airshaft

2008-04-11T10:53:00.003-04:00

West Village Construction

2008-04-11T10:51:00.000-04:00

A city mom - 6 kids in the heart of NYC

2008-04-01T17:03:00.000-04:00

Out Gabe's Window

2008-04-01T16:58:00.000-04:00

Going away party.

2008-01-28T15:56:00.000-05:00

Out my window Brooklyn.

2008-01-28T15:12:00.000-05:00

Living in a fishbowl. New construction on 6th avenue in Chelsea.

2008-01-28T15:03:00.000-05:00

Next Door Neighbors

2008-01-28T14:44:00.005-05:00

These two neighbors never met but look into each other's windows.

I like the water towers, the way we are close enough to see people’s expressions and read their moods while being out of sight.

2008-01-28T14:33:00.000-05:00

Waking to the sound of the train out her window.

2008-01-28T13:59:00.000-05:00

A new imigrant from Sweden falls in love with a woman and the city with his view of the Empire State Building and more.

2007-11-16T11:06:00.001-05:00

He says about his view " The stoic buildings of Manhattan are a constant reminder of the excitement, loneliness, and ambition I feel in New York and myself. : When I first moved here, Manhattan was surreal, the views from my window were as romantic as my ideas of the city. Now that 3 years has passed, the buildings are the same, but everything else has changed so much…" He sees, "The crooked rooftops and skylights of Brooklyn in the same glance as the magnificence of the Empire state and Chrysler’s tops. "

360 Degree view

2007-10-24T14:16:00.008-04:00

This mom enjoys her beautiful skyline view but is soon to move as it is not a child friendly apartment. Please listen to the audio above to hear her interview.

a view of lower Manhattan and the Brooklyn industrial waterfront

2007-10-24T14:15:00.001-04:00

• Where do you live?

Columbia Street Waterfront in Brooklyn. Adding to the picaresque flavor, the Brooklyn waterfront neighborhood I reside in was called Smoky Hollow in the nineteenth century -- a bastion of low lifes, ruffians, and ne’er do wells. The “Hollow” was ruled by the notorious Smoky Hollow Gang, whose members were involved in a high profile trial after murdering a New York City police officer on Columbia Street. Brooklyn Daily Eagle issues from the time period report that some members of the gang did reside at my address.

• How would you describe your neighborhood?

I acquired the building in 2000. The building housed a bar on the street level and a rooming house upstairs. Throughout the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, the bar was frequented by the longshoreman and shipping crews from around the world that docked at the Brooklyn piers. With the advent of container shipper in the second half of the twentieth century, the shallow port of Brooklyn lost out to the deeper ports of New Jersey that could accommodate the larger vessels. At the same time, the Brooklyn Queens Expressway was erected and cut off Columbia Street from the gentrifying brownstone sections of Cobble Hill and Brooklyn Heights. Zoned for industrial use but of little interest to industry with the lack of shipping, the area fell on hard times for decades. The port continues to be utilized at low capacity as the neighborhood is now caught in a classic New York City economic and political tug of war with jobs, housing, and forces of gentrification in play.

• How has your neighborhood changed since you moved there?

The surrounding neighborhoods of Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens have contributed to the New York City gentrification juggernaut, while the cut off enclave of the Columbia Street Waterfront has stood still, seemingly stuck in time as the forces of jobs and housing battle it out.

• Why did you choose your apartment?

The waterfront benefits from the dichotomy of being in the middle of the city at the same time as being on the periphery. You can enjoy all the city has to offer and escape to the serenity of the New York harbor.

•Any interesting stories about how you found your apartment?

The former owner of the building operated an illegal garment factory in the basement. He was an aging hippie, and he had a business making clothing out of hemp. He had illegally converted the building to residential loft apartments -- his idea was to sell apartments in the building, but in his disdain for the legal system he skipped the technicalities of filing construction permits or condo conversion documents. Over a period of three years, I convinced him to sell me the entire building. It took me four additional years to file permits and obtain a legal certificate of occupancy.

• What do you like/ dislike most about your view?

My view encompasses panoramic views of the New York harbor and the lower Manhattan skyline. The East River and the Hudson meet below the Battery and form Buttermilk Channel, a tidal strait between Governors Island and the Brooklyn Waterfront. Legend has it that centuries ago the channel could be crossed at low tide, and farmers would walk their cows over to Governors Island to graze. I have looked many times, but I have yet to see this occur. The fact that I have not seen this is what I find the most disappointing about my view.

• How has your view changed since you moved into your apartment?

Just the World Trade Center -- I imagine this is not an uncommon response.

•What do you see from your apartment that you find interesting?

They call tugboats the hardest little working boat in the harbor -- and it’s true. They come in crayola colors: blue, red, yellow and they navigate where the bigger boats can’t, getting them out of jams, pushing barges, and putting out fires. Ships from foreign ports dock outside my window in the middle of the night, unload their cargos and depart before dawn. Gigantic cranes lift containers of goods from land to sea. The Statue of Liberty sleeplessly oversees the harbor. Historic Governors Island, once Dutch, then British, now American –- sold to the city of New York for the price of one dollar during a helicopter ride negotiated by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan with President Bill Clinton. The Staten Island ferry lit up like a ghost streaks across the bay in the dead of night. And the skyline of lower Manhattan, burly and self-assured, spectacularly lights up the night sky.

•What various kinds of people do you see from your view?

Tourists on booze cruises. Sailors from far off lands. Doctors on their weekend sailboats. Longshoreman on break from operating the cranes.

•How does your view make you feel?

Humble. And lucky.

•Has anybody outside seen you look out the window? If so, did any interesting story or relationship occur from that?

I think someone changing a flat tire looked up during the photo session and wondered if we could help them.

• How do you think your view will be different in 1 year?

I think it will not change in one year.

• How do you think your view will be different in 20 years?

Eventually, the harbor will be developed for commercial purposes. While it is not viable as a port in the modern age, twenty years is but a blink of an eye in the timeline of New York politics. So my guess is I will continue to enjoy the views of the tugboats and the dramatic lower Manhattan skyline for at least that long.

Formerly a Manhattan snob moves to Long Island City and realizes it is the place to be!

2007-10-24T14:08:00.001-04:00

This Manhattan native describes her move to Long Island City:
I spent the summer of 2006 looking for apartments and keeping a photo log of everyone I saw. For close to a month, my husband and I kept looking at the floor plans and model apt pictures online for the new Long Island City rental buildings, but I couldn’t be convinced to make an apointment to view them. My lifelong Manhattan snobbery was getting in the way. I couldn’t see myself living in Queens. Finally, my husband persuaded me to take the 7 train that 1 quick stop out of Manhattan to see the apartment, and the moment I walked in, and saw the view, the spacious layout, the sunlight, and felt the strong cross ventilation from the South/west and north facing floor to ceiling windows, I knew I had come “home.” My husband looked at the apartment the next day and we signed the lease 2 weeks later.

• What do you like/ dislike most about your view?
There is not a single thing I dislike about my view. I love watching the sunsets over Manhattan and seeing how the change in weather patterns changes my view on a daily basis. One moment the city can be blanketed in haze only to be broken through by the sun moments later. I love watching the seaplanes flying by my windows hourly as they land on the East River. And most of all, I love sitting on my window sill and watching the Forth Of July fireworks explode at my finger tips.

• How has your view changed since you moved into your apartment?
I’ve noticed more construction cranes rising above the Manhattan and East Queens skyline.

•What do you see from your apartment that you find interesting?
The changing colors of the Empire State Building, the UN, the Chrysler, boats and barges sailing up and down the east river, and being able to do our own traffic reports for the 59th Street bridge!

•What various kinds of people do you see from your view?
Construction workers 20 stories below; other residents picnicking and sunbathing in the park below.

•How does your view make you feel?
Fulfilled.