Author(s): Gail Albert Halaban

Pictorial Travel

Gail Albert Halaban: Paris Views is a continuation of Halabans 2012 series Out My Window. In this new set of images, Halaban shifts her focus from New York to Paris while continuing to steady her gaze through the windows of her neighbors and others in the community. The photographs, taken between 2012 and 2013, feature cinematic atmospheres and intimate domestic stills. Through Halabans lens, the viewer is welcomed into the private worlds of ordinary people. The photographs in Gail Albert Halaban: Paris Views explore the conventions and tensions of urban lifestyles, the blurring between reality and fantasy, feelings of isolation in the city, and the intimacies of home and daily life. In these meticulously directed, window framed versions of reality, Halaban allows the viewer to create his or her own fictions about the characters, activities, and interiors illuminated within. This invitation to imagine renders the characters and settings both personal and mysterious. Halaban's seductive photography appeals to the flaneur in all of us.