In her new book, Paris Views, American photographer Gail Albert Halaban captures glimpses, Rear Window-style, into apartments all over the French capital. Though the images appear to be purely voyeuristic, as if taken on the sly, they are actually somewhat staged, their subjects well aware of the photographer's presence across the courtyard or the street. It's a technique that Halaban first developed in earlier work, particularly her series "Out My Window," which featured similar shots of New York City living spaces. An editor at Le Monde's M magazine saw those photos and asked Halaban to repeat her process, this time in Paris.
Most of Halaban’s Paris shots present people going about the simple rituals of daily life—a man drinking his morning coffee, a woman opening a can of soup, some toddlers at a birthday party. Many have a film-still quality reminiscent of the work of one of Halaban’s mentors, American photographer Gregory Crewdson, with a similar open-ended sense of drama prompted by the suspended action. A big part of the book’s pleasure, especially for American readers, is that it allows us to imagine being these Parisians’ neighbor, gazing out from a romantic Marais garret or chic St.-Germain pied-à-terre, and to daydream about a life lived with these views.
