#photographers gallery
Alex Prager, Desiree(fromThe Big Valley), 2008, c-print, Alex Prager Studio.
‘Alex Prager: Silver Lake Drive’ at The Photographers’ Gallery
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
It has been well over a year since I visited a solo exhibition in the photographic medium (Wolfgang Tillmans at Tate Modern, February 2017, for those who care). I was actually recommended ‘Alex Prager: Silver Lake Drive’ by a kind client at work, and though it is not in character for me to follow such advice when it comes to exhibitions - especially for a show I’d never even heard of - boy, am I glad I did.
Alex Prager, Four Girls (fromPolyester), 2007, c-print, Alex Prager Studio.
Prager (1979-) is an American photographer and filmmaker whose work takes on the aesthetics of mid-20th-century Hollywood cinema and stylised fashion photography. Boldly saturated colours, glamorous costumes and almost comic make-up feature in her work, but don’t think Prager is solely focused on the ‘look’. Layers of emotion and storytelling are there for the viewer to find, particularly in the Crowd series, in which groups of individuals in public spaces are depicted in sharp focus and detail. And because everyone is equally emphasised, the eye is constantly darting across the image, seeking new characters and objects to analyse.
Alex Prager, Anaheim, 2017, c-print, Alex Prager Studio.
Prager has also mastered the moving image. I don’t usually spend too long in the film sections of exhibitions, but these pieces are utterly irresistible. Face in the Crowd from 2013, starring Elizabeth Banks, features a series of monologues from a diverse range of characters, interspersed between claustrophobic bustling crowd scenes. This, and 2010′s Sunday- two nearly identical frames simultaneously showing the same faces in a sports crowd before a startling conclusion - were my stand-out works. I could watch Prager’s images all day and would love to see her meticulous style in a full-length feature film, though that’s probably just being greedy.
Anyway, this is IT, you guys - the show of the summer. Don’t miss it!
Alex Prager, Crowd #7 (Bob Hope Airport) (fromFace in the Crowd), 2013, archival pigment print, Alex Prager Studio.
Alex Prager: Silver Lake Drive is on at The Photographers’ Gallery until 14th October. All images are my own.
