If you live in an apartment in a city like New York or Paris, chances are you secretly spy on your neighbors. It’s hard not to. In my New York apartment, my living room window is only about 30 feet away from my neighbor’s. You notice things–like the fact that my neighbor had red plaid curtains until a woman started showing her face. The curtains quickly disappeared.
Turns out I’m not alone in my morbid curiosity about my neighbors’ tastes in window coverings. New York-based photographer Gail Albert Halaban has spent 13 years photographing people’s relationships with those they can see from their windows–and actually helping them meet each other. For her sprawling, multi-city photo series Out My Window, Halaban helps a person meet the folks who live across from them, and then stages a photograph of those people with their permission. She sets up lighting in their apartment, and then photographs them from across the way, capturing their lives through the window.
