Gail Albert-Halaban (born Gail Hilary Albert, 1970, in

Washington, DC ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan ...

) is an American fine art and commercial photographer. She is noted for her large scale, color photographs of women and urban, voyeuristic landscapes. Gail Albert Halaban

Life and career

Albert-Halaban earned her BA from

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

and her MFA in photography from

Yale University School of Art The Yale School of Art is the art school of Yale University. Founded in 1869 as the first professional fine arts school in the United States, it grants Masters of Fine Arts degrees to students completing a two-year course in graphic design, painti ...

where she studied with

Gregory Crewdson Gregory Crewdson (born September 26, 1962) is an American photographer. He photographs tableaux of American homes and neighborhoods. Life and career Crewdson was born in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. He attended John Dewey ...

, Lois Conner, Richard Benson,

Nan Goldin Nancy Goldin (born September 12, 1953) is an American photographer and activist. Her work often explores LGBT subcultures, moments of intimacy, the HIV/AIDS crisis, and the opioid epidemic. Her most notable work is '' The Ballad of Sexual Depe ...

and

Tod Papageorge Tod Papageorge (born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire United States, 1940) is an American photographer whose career began in the New York City street photography movement of the 1960s. He is the recipient of two Guggenheim fellowships and two NEA Visu ...

. Albert-Halaban is represented by Edwynn Houk Gallery in New York City, in Atlanta, and Podbielski Contemporary in Milano. She married Boaz Halaban on June 8, 1997.

''About Thirty'' series

Albert-Halaban's photographic series ''About Thirty'' examines the life of privileged women in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

and

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

. These scenes of mothers with their nannies or a group of women comparing engagement rings establish both a critique of this kind of lifestyle as well as what the artist calls her own "complicated desire" to be part of this world.

''Hopper Redux'' series

Albert-Halaban's series ''Hopper Redux'' revisits the exact locations in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where

Edward Hopper Edward Hopper (July 22, 1882 – May 15, 1967) was an American realist painter and printmaker. While he is widely known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching. Hopper created subdued drama ...

painted. The photographs elicit an uncanny familiarity. They echo Hopper's paintings, but they are decidedly photographic and of the present day. In this sense they seem to oscillate between the historical past and the contemporary present.

''Out My Window'' series

Albert-Halaban's ongoing series ''Out My Window'' consists of elaborately staged photographs of people in their homes, shot from a distance. The architecture of

apartment buildings features prominently in the pictures, but the focus is the intimate view of their inhabitants.

''Out My Window, Paris'' series

Albert-Halaban's series ''Out My Window, Paris'' picks up where its namesake leaves off. Set in Paris, Albert-Halaban peers through and photographs what’s behind the windows in the French city’s apartments and courtyards. As with "Out My Window" the residents are knowingly photographed, as if actors on the film set. A set of the Paris photographs first appeared in the French publication Le Monde in November 2012.

''Out My Window'', global

Albert-Halaban has published a book called ''Italian Views'' with the Aperture Foundation, in which she has photographed from window to neighboring window in cities throughout that nation and collected stories of what neighbors imagine when they look to their neighbor's windows. She has photographed in countries around the globe including South Korea, Turkey, Portugal, Canada, Argentina, France, and Israel both by traveling to those countries and by using remote technology to photograph from her studio in New York City.

Distinctions

Albert-Halaban's work has appeared in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', ''

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

'', ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

'', '' M, World Magazine'', ''

Slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...

'', and ''

The Huffington Post ''HuffPost'' (formerly ''The Huffington Post'' until 2017 and sometimes abbreviated ''HuffPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and ...

''. Her fine art photography has been internationally exhibited. Albert-Halaban was a New York Foundation for the Arts fellow in 2019.

Collections

Albert-Halaban's work is in public and private collections including the Hermes Foundation, George Eastman Museum, Yale University Art Gallery, Nelson Atkins Museum, Getty Museum, Cape Ann Museum, Wichita Art Museum hold her work. She teaches in the Medical Humanities Department at Columbia University.

Teaching

Albert-Halaban teaches in the Narrative Medicine Department at Columbia University where she supports and teaches art-making on the medical campus by both students and faculty. Her program teaches observation and empathy. Research shows that education in the humanities improves doctors' performance.

Cross-discipline work

Inspired by her ''Out My Window'' photograph series, Sheila Callaghan and Marcus Gardley composed a one-act play ''Grace & Milt'', dramatizing what might happen when neighbors who have never met connect through their windows. Its debut performance, starring Adam O'Byrne and Zoe Winters, took place in April 2019 at Aperture Gallery in New York City.

References

External links

*
Friends with Money

* ttp://www.houkgallery.com Houk Gallery* ttps://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/14/arts/art-guide.html?scp=21&sq=ariel%20meyerowitz&st=nyt&pagewanted=4 ''The New York Times'' 14 March 2003
''New Yorker'' 16 March 2009

Aperture.org

{{DEFAULTSORT:Halaban, Gail Albert 1970 births Living people Photographers from Washington, D.C. 20th-century American photographers 21st-century American photographers Brown University alumni Yale School of Art alumni 20th-century American women photographers 21st-century American women photographers