Gail Albert Halaban in CNN

How can photographers capture human connection in the age of coronavirus?

 

Amid a global pandemic that is forcing vast swathes of society to stay at home, photographers around the world consider what this means for visual storytelling.

Written by:Fiona Sinclair Scott, CNN

Updated 3rd April 2020

See more of Gail Albert Halaban’s photos here. 

Gail Albert Halaban, took this photo titled, “Reunion after Days Away,” in Lucca, Italy before the coronavirus outbreak. The photo is published in her book “Italian Views.” (Aperture, 2019)

Gail Albert Halaban is already known for photographing people at home. Taken through the windows of onlooking neighbors, her voyeuristic images show people at home in a semi-staged setting in cities around the world long before the outbreak of coronavirus. Now, the pictures feel eerily relevant.

Speaking from her apartment in New York she said, “I think that the window space is the place where we do make so much of our connections, particularly living in a city.

“If you look across into your neighbors’ window, you see that they’re doing the same things you’re doing … in our social isolation, it’s really reassuring to see that the person across the street is also homeschooling or making their coffee or reading bedtime stories.”

For Halaban, photography’s power comes from its ability to ground us in a moment in time. “I think photography is the most present medium,” she said, “It’s saying, ‘I am here now and I’m making this picture and it only exists in this instantaneous moment in time.'”

While vast swathes of society must stay at home for our own protection, limiting physical contact in unprecedented ways, photographers can still capture human connections and symbolic moments in time.

Read the full article of Gail Albert Halaban in CNN here.