Alex Prager (born 1979)[1] is an American artist, director, and screenwriter based in Los Angeles.[2][3]
Prager is known for her uncanny and highly staged images and films that blur the line between artifice and reality.[4][5]
Early life
Prager was born in Los Feliz, Los Angeles. At age fourteen, she dropped out of school and traveled to Switzerland on her own, where she worked at a knife store in Lucerne. She returned to Switzerland frequently for longer periods of time and earned her G.E.D at sixteen.[6]
When she was twenty-one and living in Los Angeles, Prager was inspired to pursue photography after seeing an exhibition of William Eggleston’s photographs at the Getty Museum. She cites this as a formative experience: “I felt like I was struck blind by a vision and that was the path I was going to take for the rest of my life.” A self-taught artist, Prager avoided formal art education and instead purchased a Nikon N90s camera and printed photographs in a home darkroom.[7][8][9]
Prager uses symbolism, humor, allegory, and surreal elements, as well as formal and conceptual techniques, to evoke a psychological response and explore the human experience.[4] She has said that she approaches each project as a reflection of her personal questions and those of greater society.[13]
Employing traditional filmmaking techniques, effects, and large-scale productions, Prager often constructs complex scenes with elaborate characters and saturated, commonplace settings.[6] She uses costuming to define her characters and expand her narratives, pulling from her extensive wardrobe collection.[10]
During the pre-production process, Prager meticulously plans every element to allow for the unknown and chaos to unfold in a controlled environment. All elements of the images are practical and shot in-camera, and she has said “it’s important [to her] that you could theoretically touch anything you see in the frame.” [13]
Early Work
Prager’s early series, Polyester (2007), TheBig Valley (2008), and Week-End (2009), are defined by portraits featuring female protagonists against a Los Angeles backdrop.[14][12]
Career
In 2008, Prager transitioned into filmmaking after her exhibition The Big Valley in London, a defining moment for the artist.[15]
Prager’s first short film, "Despair" (2010) starring Bryce Dallas Howard, was included in the New Photography 2010 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, alongside her photographs, which was a breakthrough in her career.[16][9][17] The Curator of Photography at MoMA, Roxana Marcoci, described Prager’s work as "intentionally loaded", saying "it reminds me of silent movies— there is something pregnant, about to happen, a mix of desire and angst."[11]
In 2011, Kathy Ryan, Director of Photography for The New York Times Magazine, commissioned Prager to shoot twelve 1-minute films inspired by "cinematic villainy", with some film actors from that year. Prager won a News and Documentary Emmy Award for New Approaches to News & Documentary Programming: Arts, Lifestyle & Culture for her "Touch of Evil "short films.[18]
With her 2012 series of diptychs, Compulsion, Prager addressed themes of disaster, observation, compulsive spectatorship, and how the meanings of images are derived from a multiplicity of gazes.[19][12][20] Her short film "La Petite Mort," starring French actress Judith Godreche with narration from Gary Oldman, was shown alongside the body of work.[5] The film was a "contemplation on death" and "a way for [her] to deal with the hopelessness [she] was feeling about the world. Creating a parallel universe where tragedies happen but with a sense of lightness as well."[21]
Prager's series, Face in the Crowd, debuted at Washington D.C.'s Corcoran Gallery of Art in 2013, marking her first solo museum exhibition in the U.S.[22] The series of highly staged images of crowds in various familiar settings indicated a distinctive shift in the artist’s practice.[23][24][9] The new body of work connected familiar themes in her artwork, but also explored the contemporary condition of the individual and the crowd and human connection versus isolation.[23][25] The exhibition included photographic work and a three-channel installation of the film (2013), featuring Elizabeth Banks.[22]
She was commissioned by the Paris Opera in 2015 to create a film for 3e Scène, which also coincided with a series of photographs from the project. The film, "La Grande Sortie" portrays the perspectives of performer and audience and considers the underlying tension in this relationship. It features Émilie Cozette and Karl Paquette dancing to an adapted score by Nigel Godrich.[26][27][28]
In 2019, Prager completed and exhibited her most autobiographical body of work to date, which included photographs and a new short film, "Play the Wind" with Dimitri Chamblas and Riley Keough. The work is an homage to and reflection on the city of Los Angeles, Prager’s hometown and a frequent source of inspiration throughout her career.[31][32][33][7]
Prager returned to portraiture in 2021 with Part One: The Mountain. Inspired to examine the complicated emotional effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, Prager created a more simple and intimate series of Americana portraits capturing her fictional subjects in the midst of intense inner turmoil.[37][38][39]
Continuing to explore the anxiety and responses of living through uncertain times, Prager followed with a new short film starring Katherine Waterson and an accompanying series of images for Part Two: Run in 2022. The film, titled "Run" (2022), features the unfolding chaos of gigantic silver ball barreling through a small town to a soundtrack by Ellen Reid and Philip Glass.[40][41]
In 2024, Prager debuted Western Mechanics, her first exhibition with Lehmann Maupin in Seoul.[42] The new body of photographic work circumvented linear narrative and instead focused on the presentation of emotionally charged vignettes.[43]
Prager's films are often psychological thrillers touching on horror and characterized by depictions of isolation, fear, artifice, and the need for connection.[27][40] Humor, entwined with the unsettling elements, plays an important role in her work.[36]
Prager is currently working on her debut feature film, DreamQuil, described as a cautionary tale about identity, automation, and humanity set in the near distant future. The film stars Elizabeth Banks and John C. Reilly and is set to be released in 2025 by Republic Pictures.[48][49]
Prager's work is often discussed in connection to Los Angeles. Emily Witt, a journalist and staff writer for The New Yorker, wrote “Prager does for photography what James Ellroy did for crime fiction, inventing a neo-noir L.A. vernacular that creates a feeling of the past without the limitations of historical accuracy.” [6]
Prager's photographic and filmic compositions, like Eggleston's photographs, Alfred Hitchcock's films, and Edward Hopper's paintings, reveal the extraordinary lurking within the ordinary. Wreaking havoc with our involuntary voyeurism and our tendency to leap to conclusions about people's characters based on the merest details of their appearances, Prager cues our own fantasies by representing her own.[10]
Prager belongs to a generation of contemporary artists who fully own their media. She wields a camera and a director’s chair with equal strength, and creates both motion pictures and photographs in full view of their commercial influences and the complex politics of art-house avant-garde cinema.[5]
Prager's crowd photographs are among her most well-known and lauded.[51][41]Art historian and curator William J Simmons wrote
We might then connect Prager’s crowds to democratic studies of class and labor, like August Sander’s Face of our Time (1929) and Irving Penn’s Small Trades (1950–51) . . . Prager’s contemporary crowds, filled with markers of class, gender, occupation, and privilege (or lack thereof), absorb and require us to consider the very real ramifications of collectivity and estrangement.[52]
Fragile Beauty: Photographs from the Sir Elton John and David Furnish Photography Collection, Victoria & Albert Museum South Kensington, London, United Kingdom, 2024[98]
^Rizov, Vadim (2023-09-20). "Alex Prager - Filmmaker Magazine". Filmmaker Magazine | Publication with a focus on independent film, offering articles, links, and resources. Retrieved 2024-02-08.
^ abBooher, Kaitlin (2014). "Crowd Source: Scenes by Alex Prager". Alex Prager: Face in the Crowd. LEHMANN MAUPIN/M+B GALLERY. pp. 27–30. ISBN9780615901749.
^ abcdMansfield, Michael (2018). "Pretend to Pretend in the Art of Appearances". Alex Prager: Silver Lake Drive. Chronicle Books. pp. 146–157. ISBN9781452171579.
^ abcGovan, Michael (2018). "Alex Prager, Double Take". Alex Prager: Silver Lake Drive. Chronicle Books. pp. 12–15. ISBN9781452171579.
^ abHomes, A. M. (September 2010). "UNEASY PIECES". Vanity Fair | The Complete Archive. Archived from the original on 2023-08-16. Retrieved 2023-11-30.
