Davy Jones' Pictures: Assignment 5

David Medina

Photography
Assignment 5

Audubon Mural Project, Gail Halaban

For my Mural Project I attended the Aperture Photography Gallery. A small gallery on west 27th street, Aperture holds several different exhibits on the different floors of the building it is located in. On the fourth floor is the exhibit I went to, Gail Halaban’s photographic documentation of the Audubon Mural Project. The Audubon Mural project was a group effort that consisted of multiple different painters and graffiti artists who were commissioned to paint endangered birds as murals throughout the Washington Heights neighborhood. Gail Halaban was then sent to immortalize these murals through her photography of them. Gail would not only capture these paintings but she would also capture the surrounding buildings, logos, advertisements, people or even city landscape. Which as the website says, was an effort to show birds coexisting with people.

The Artists presented in the Audubon Mural project are:

-Ben Angotti

-Frank Parga

-Jacinta Stewart

-Mr. Mustart

-Tom Sanford

-Colleen Smith

-ATM (The alias they go by)

-Greg Burak

The Exhibit consisted of four white walls each with photographs of murals and next to them little descriptions of the bird the artist painted and a description of the artist.

Gail Halaban is a fine art and commercial photographer. SHe is best known for the photographs she takes out of New York apartment windows according to Artsy.net. She is particularly noted for taking photographs of other people through their windows and the themes of voyeurism that come with that. This possibly explains why when taking photos for the Audubon Mural Project she chose to include bits of the neighborhood and its people within each picture. It appears that Gail also liked to use a slow shutter speed for this particular project as in multiple photos the people in the corner of the frame appear blurred in the image I would like to focus on one person appears to be walking in front of the camera but the shutter speed is so slow that only their shoes are visible to the camera.

The Image I choose from the Audubon Mural Project

[[PICTURE WILL BE ADDED LATER MY UPLOADING DEVICE STOPPED WORKING]]

I choose to talk about this image because I find it to be the most interesting both due to the painting and the photographic choices Halaban made. The painting is of a ferruginous hawk by Ben Angotti and the image depicts the powerful bird of prey swooping down from the sky with its talons out and a fierce look on three garage doors with blank space in between. The photograph of the image shows an angled view of the mural with a very slow shutter speed that captures a blur of a man walking past the camera. This man appears to be walking fast as the other two people in the image are not nearly as blurred or perhaps, they had been standing still for a while. Regardless, this shows an interesting choice in camera settings that depicts the fast paced environment of New York in contrast with Angotti’s attempt to paint an action shot of the hawk.

Compared to the work of other photographers Gail Halaban’s use of the background of the city and the people in it was a smart move artistically and in my opinion I believe it adds more emotion and adds to the message of the overall exhibit as said on the website.

Overall, I really enjoyed the exhibit as I think it accomplished its goal to show birds nearing extinction harmoniously living with the people that inhabit New York. The exhibit is both thought provoking and semi-emotional as all the birds in the pictures near extinction. The exhibit also brings one’s mind to climate change and serves as a message to the viewers of the gallery that the planet is in dire need of help.

An Image by Gail Halaban from a previous show: