Out My Window

I am absolutely in love with Gail Albert Halaban’s ‘Out My Window’ photographs. One of my favourite things about walking through New York, or glancing out the window of wherever you happen to be, is catching glimpses of scenes from other people’s lives through their windows—not in a creepy way (at least that’s what I tell myself, and The New York Times seems to agree)—but in exactly the sort of way that she’s managed to capture. I don’t have her book yet, but I plan to buy a copy as soon as possible. Such a genius idea, and beautifully executed...

It reminds me of a passage from a piece of writing I adore, Joan Didion’s ‘Goodbye to All That’...

‘... on a certain kind of winter evening—six-thirty in the Seventies, say, already dark and bitter with a wind off the river, when I would be walking very fast toward a bus and would look in the bright windows of brownstones and see cooks working in clean kitchens and and imagine women lighting candles on the floor above and beautiful children being bathed on the floor above that ...’
(you can read more here, and I highly recommend you do)

Because that’s what the real appeal of window-watching is, isn’t it? You see only one moment, but you imagine others—once I was walking through Brooklyn Heights and there was a brownstone with a pink balloon tied to the stairs, and through the window I could see a fridge decorated with magnets and children’s drawings, and for a moment you can guess at what it might be like to be a little girl living in one of the most captivating cities in the world.
(I did take a photo, though it’s nothing compared to the photos above!)