Audubon Mural Project Prints

Aperture is pleased to make available for purchase the prints featured in the exhibition Audubon Mural Project: Photographs by Gail Albert Halaban. This exhibition was made possible with the generous support of Jill Fairchild.

View a complete list of images and prices here, and please contact prints@aperture.org to place an order. Proceeds from the sale of works in the show will benefit the Audubon Society and Aperture Foundation.

More than 350 species of birds pass through New York City each year, seeking out scattered patches of the city's greenery. Today, more than one hundred are more permanent residents, painted on the walls of bodegas, barbershops, and other buildings of Manhattan's northernmost neighborhoods. A collaboration between the National Audubon Society and Gitler, the Audubon Mural Project has commissioned a spectrum of artists—from fine-art painters to graffiti artists—to create murals of imperiled birds, with each mural loosely based on the watercolors of John James Audubon, the pioneering nineteenth-century ornithologist. The murals are sited in and around the Washington Heights neighborhood, where John James Audubon lived and worked.

In 2019, at the initiative of Jill Fairchild, the artist Gail Albert Halaban was commissioned to document a selection of these murals before—given the transient nature of street art—they begin to fade or disappear. Albert Halaban's resulting photographs place the murals within the context of the community. The photographs, like the murals themselves, serve to remind us that birds and people coexist and that we both need a healthy environment in order to survive. As the planet warms, many bird species will be vulnerable to extinction; the Audubon Mural Project not only beautifies the neighborhood, it also serves as a fresh, surprising way to bring attention to a critically important conservation crisis.

The National Audubon Society protects birds and the places they need, today and tomorrow, throughout the Americas using science, advocacy, education, and on-the-ground conservation. Audubon's state programs, nature centers, chapters, and partners have an unparalleled wingspan that reaches millions of people each year to inform, inspire, and unite diverse communities in conservation action. A nonprofit conservation organization since 1905, Audubon believes in a world in which people and wildlife thrive. For more information about the Audubon Mural Project or to sponsor a future bird mural, visit the Audubon Society.

Pigment Prints (available in two sizes)
Option 1:
20 x 30 inches
Edition of 20
$650

Option 2:
40 x 50 inches
Edition of 10
$2500

View a complete image list here.

Gail Albert Halaban (b. 1970, Washington, D.C.) received an MFA in photography from Yale University. She has taught at the Pasadena Art Center, International Center of Photography, and Yale, among other notable institutions. She has been included in both group and solo exhibitions internationally. Her previous books include Out My Window (powerHouse, 2012) and Gail Albert Halaban: Paris Views (Aperture, 2014). She is represented by Edwynn Houk Gallery in New York.