In a recent conversation with a friend, I was intrigued by the way she described her feelings as he walked down the empty streets in her hometown while hearing the televisions of her neighbors at full volume in the living rooms. In this contention between the emptiness of the streets and the fullness of the houses that we have all in a way experienced in the past months, the sounds and voices our neighbors appeared as signs of human proximity. Knowing that houses were full and that everyone was trying to go on with their lives, seemed to foster a new-found sense of community, which is nevertheless only temporary as it linked to the contingent circumstances.
Discovering Gail Albert Halaban’s projects in this specific time seemed like an interesting opportunity to reflect on the idea of community. In her project Out of My Window, defined as “an art-driven opportunity to reclaim the physical and emotional connection to our neighbors”, the American Yale-trained photographer sets out to create local communities. As she began to move to different cities around the world starting from NYC more than a decade ago, she started introducing herself to her new neighbors and tried to create a local network by introducing neighbors to neighbors.
The next step in her project consisted of taking large scale photographs of these people from their neighbors’ windows, thus portraying them as they were seen by others. Far from having a spectator-like approach, Halaban expresses the desire to connect with the people surrounding her and to make them active participants in the project. By taking pictures of how people are seen from their neighbors’ windows, she makes human bonds visible and freezes them her pictures.
