It’s hard to believe it’s been just over a decade since Alex Prager’s cinematic images of young women in retro costumes first gained attention. The photographs from her series “Polyester” (2007) and “The Big Valley” (2008) look as fresh today as they did when we first began wondering what exactly was going on with the characters in her images. Prager has since produced several other series, and has made the natural progression from photographing meticulously staged, cinematic images to filmmaking. Her first retrospective book, Silver Lake Drive, out this month, gathers all of her work to date.
In an interview with Nathalie Herschdorfer included in the book, Prager describes her photographs in simple terms: “My work is like film stills that are films that have never been made.” Therein lies part of the appeal of her photographs: To an imaginative viewer, a single image can suggest an entire world. Prager’s works are full of mystery and human drama. Their obvious artificiality and invocation of the style of postwar Hollywood films also urges us to think about how movies have shaped our culture, and about the types of stories that engage us as viewers. “We always want to know more about the horrible things that happen,” Prager says in explaining the motivation for her series “Compulsion,” which pairs close-up images of eyes with photographs of all manner of accidents. “How much to do we really want to look away?”
Prager’s interview offers several fascinating details: She says an early mentor told her to isolate herself from other photographers for a couple of years so she could find her own style. She watches a film a day. Technical skill is vital to her work because it gives her “the freedom to create the image I have in my mind.” She sketches and storyboards every one of her shoots—whether it’s for stills or motion, or a combination of the two. She plans meticulously, “but the best things that happen during filming are usually something that nobody planned.” Prager also says she feels “most happy” when she’s working with her team. “This is the best version of myself.”
—CONOR RISCH
Silver Lake Drive
By Alex Prager
Introduction by Michael Govan, interview by Nathalie Herschdorfer
Chronicle Books
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