Gail Albert Halaban’s photography project, which was
highly talked about after its New York and Paris presentations
out my window, is in İstanbul in September
under the collaboration of ISTANBUL’74.
Halaban’s project, which was put on in New York
and Paris, subsequently transformed into a show and book “Out
My Window”, in its İstanbul leg once again brought together never
before have met neighbors.
The artist, expecting the project participants to stand in the place
of another, invites them to tranform their relationships with each
other and the place they live in. The project allows participants
who are neighbors to play the social life role of the other. With
this perspective, the artist includes “neighbours” from all over the
world, addressing profound and personal ties in global scale.
Created by having project participants take on each other’s role,
this interaction incites the participants to realize how they view
each other in society and in common living spaces and discover
the distantness brough about by urban life although actually they
stand close to each other.
The project, which was previously shown and published worldwide,
will take place with the collaboration of İstanbul’74 in
İstanbul from September 1 to September 7, 2015. The photographs
taken during the project after the end of the project will be
turned into an exhibition as part of İstanbul’74 and published as
a book by 74STUDIO.
Continuing with her endeavors in New York, Gail Albert Halaban
was first involved in photography when she held a camera for the
first time for a science project when she was just six. She studied
art at Yale University. Halaban’s art concept is focused on the discovery
of the tension between the parts of social and individual
lives that are visible and kept concealed.
The artist confesses that with the “Out My Window” series,
made up of her photographs where she reflects the windows of
New York and Paris residents, may involve our unexpressed voyarism
sentiments and pushes us towards confronting all of those
feelings which each glance of ours at another makes us feel, like
the underlying hope and the loneliness we push ourselves into.
Although her photographs appear to reflect a space entered into
uninvited, in fact, those photographed are starting collaborating
with the artist, posing in line with their real life role. A common
experience totally dedicated to the city is experienced in the
project where all photographs are prepared under a special light
design. This experience points at the state of being the same somewhere
in the deep, captured by an individual in one’s closest
moment with one’s neighbour, despite appearing so different.
At the end of the process, the artist has assisted many neighbours
who stand closest to each other as a result of the individuality
brought about by city life without knowing each other, who witness
the life of the other each day but who have no knowledge
at all about the other one’s life to come together by a doorbell.
With the stage she sets up, Halaban also helps the participants
who look at each other and themselves to start a new relationship
as well.
