Alex Prager

Prager was born in Los Feliz, Los Angeles. She dropped out of school at sixteen.[3]

She took up photography after viewing an exhibition of William Eggleston's at the Getty Museum when she was age 21.[3][4] She is self-taught.[3]

In 2005, Prager created a group of works, The Book of Disquiet, as an exhibition and joint publication with artist Mercedes Helnwein. She exhibited Polyester in 2007, which focused on what is now described as her signature cinematic styled portraits set in Los Angeles. Her next series, The Big Valley, was shown in 2008. In 2010 Prager exhibited Week-End as well as debuted her first short film, Despair. Despair was conceived in London during The Big Valley exhibition, where viewers were inquiring what happened before and after to the subjects in her photographic work. The film starring Bryce Dallas Howard was a full-sensory version of Prager's photographs in motion, showing the before, now and after of one of her images. Her intention was to create pure, cinematic melodrama through the use of an array of artistic mediums—imagery, motion, color, sculpture, painting and sound.[5] Prager's Despair was included in the Museum of Modern Art's exhibition New Photography 2010.[6]

In 2011 Kathy Ryan, director of photography for The New York Times Magazine commissioned Prager to shoot 12, 1 minute films with some film actors from that year, inspired by "cinematic villainy". 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.[7]

In 2012, Prager addressed themes of disaster and spatial turbulence with the series Compulsion.[8] Her short film La Petite Mort starring French actress Judith Godreche with narration from Gary Oldman was shown alongside the body of work. 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."[9]

Prager's series, Face in the Crowd, debuted at Washington D.C.'s Corcoran Gallery of Art in 2013.[10]

She was commissioned by the Paris Opera in 2015 to create a film for 3e Scène. The film, La Grande Sortie, explores the tension between a performer's experience on stage and the audience watching. It stars Émilie Cozette and includes Karl Paquette dancing to an adapted score by Nigel Godrich. The film was produced by Jeremy Dawson. La Grande Sortie premiered at 3e Scène on September 15, 2015[11] and showed elsewhere.[12]

In 2019, Prager exhibited her most autobiographical body of work to date, which included photographs and a new film, Play the Wind.[3] Part One: The Mountain was exhibited in January 2022.[13]

Prager's staged color photographs are described by Ken Johnson as being influenced by Cindy Sherman, Philip-Lorca diCorcia and Douglas Sirk.[2]

MoMA curator Roxana Marcoci has described her work as "intentionally loaded", saying "it reminds me of silent movies— there is something pregnant, about to happen, a mix of desire and angst."[14]

Michael Govan, the director of Los Angeles County Museum of Art has said that

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.[15]

• Polyester, Alex Prager Studio. 2007. ASIN B001IYHQAE.
• The Big Valley / Week-end, M+B and Yancey Richardson Gallery. 2010. ISBN 0615339182.
• Compulsion, Michael Hoppen Gallery. 2012. ISBN 0615613055.
• Face in the Crowd, Corcoran. 2013). ISBN 0615901743.
• La Grande Sortie, Lehmann Maupin. 2016. ISBN 9780692763025.
• Silver Lake Drive, Thames & Hudson. ISBN 0500544972.[16]
• Play the Wind Catalog, Lehmann Maupin & Alex Prager Studio. 2019.
• Farewell, Work Holiday Parties Brochure, Los Angeles County Museum of Art & Alex Prager Studio. 2020.
• Alex Prager 2022 Catalog, Alex Prager Studio. 2022.

• Despair (2010) – starring Bryce Dallas Howard
• Touch of Evil (2011) – starring Jessica Chastain, Gary Oldman, George Clooney, Kirsten Dunst, Adepero Oduye, Ryan Gosling, Jean Dujardin, Mia Wasikowska, Viola Davis, Rooney Mara, Michael Shannon, Glenn Close, Brad Pitt[17]
• La Petite Mort (2012) – starring Judith Godreche, Gary Oldman
• Sunday (2012) – for W Magazine
• Face in the Crowd (2013) – starring Elizabeth Banks
• La Grande Sortie (2015) – starring Emilie Cozette, Karl Paquette
• Uncanny Valley (2018) – starring Cate Blanchett[18]
• Play the Wind (2019) – starring Riley Keough and Dimitri Chamblas[19]
• Run (2022) – starring Katherine Waterson

• Polyester, Robert Berman Gallery, Los Angeles, 2007[20]
• The Big Valley, Michael Hoppen Gallery, London, 2008;[21] Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York City, 2009[22]
• Week-end, Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York City, 2010[23]
• Compulsion, Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam, 2012[24]
• Mise-en-scène, Savannah College of Art and Design, 2013[25]
• Face in the Crowd, Corcoran Gallery of Art, 2013;[26] The Arts Club, London, 2014;[27] M+B Gallery, Los Angeles, 2014;[28] Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York City, 2014;[10] Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, 2015[29]
• Alex Prager, The National Gallery of Victoria, Australia, 2014[30]
• Alex Prager, Istanbul '74, Istanbul, 2015[31]
• La Grande Sortie, Lehmann Maupin, New York City, 2016[32]
• Alex Prager: Silver Lake Drive, The Photographers' Gallery, London, 2018;[33] Museum of Fine Arts Le Locle, Le Locle, Switzerland, 2018;[34] Foam Fotografiemuseum, Amsterdam, 2019;[35] Fondazione Sozzani, Milan, 2019[36]
• Welcome Home, Fotografiska, Stockholm, 2019;[37] Fotografiska, Tallinn, Estonia, 2020
• Play the Wind, Lehmann Maupin, New York City, 2019[38]
• Alex Prager: Farewell, Work Holiday Parties, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, 2020[39][40]
• Part One: The Mountain, Lehmann Maupin, London, 2021[41]
• Part Two: Run, Lehmann Maupin, New York City; Lehmann Maupin, Palm Beach, 2022[42]
• Alex Prager: Big West, Lotte Museum of Art, Seoul, 2022[43]

• New Photography 2010, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2010[6]
• No Fashion, Please: Photography Between Gender and Lifestyle, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, 2011[44]
• Another Story: Photography from the Moderna Museet Collection, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 2011[45]
• Portrait of a Generation, The Hole, New York City, 2012[46]
• At the Window: The Photographer's View, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2013[47]
• The Noir Effect, Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles, 2014[48]
• Open Rhapsody: A Journey Into Photography and Video Collections, Beirut Exhibition Center, Beirut, 2015[49]
• Telling Tales: Contemporary Narrative Photography, McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, 2016[50]
• In Production: Art and the Studio System, Yuz Museum Shanghai, Shanghai, 2019[51]
• Flora / Fauna, Josée Bienvenu Gallery, New York City, 2019[52]
• Terminal, City Gallery Wellington, Wellington, NZ, 2020[53]
• Oil. Beauty and Horror in the Petrol Age, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg, 2021[54]

• 2006: London Photographic Award
• 2009: The Vevey International Photography Award
• 2012: News and Documentary Emmy Award for New Approaches to News & Documentary Programming: Arts, Lifestyle & Culture for The New York Times-commissioned piece Touch of Evil, starring Jessica Chastain, George Clooney, Glenn Close, Kirsten Dunst, Rooney Mara, Brad Pitt, and others[7]
• 2012: Foam Paul Huf Award, Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam[55][56]

• Official website