Halaban’s images give us permission to look, and to imagine. Made in several Italian cities, the photographs allow us to peer through people’s windows as if we were their neighbors across the way. Halaban collaborates with her subjects, lighting and directing the scenes, turning them into actors in their own homes. The images satisfy our curiosity and, Halaban believes, the mixture of fact and fiction in the scenes we see imbues them with a potential that voyeuristic images don’t have. With a straight documentary image, “I don’t think your imagination would have a chance to wander as much,” she explains. “The fact that we know that it’s staged and fictionalized allows the viewer to participate in that storytelling,” she explains.
5 April 2019