Alex Prager

Alex Prager is an American photographer and filmmaker known for her cinematic colour photography featuring a hyper-real, Old Hollywood aesthetic. Taking aesthetic cues from film, fashion photography, pulp fiction, and her native city of Los Angeles, Alex Prager produces Technicolor photographs with dark, unsettling undercurrents.

An exhibition of famed American color photographer William Eggleston’s work inspired Prager to begin taking pictures and, six months later, she had her first exhibition. “I find my inspiration in the city of Los Angeles,” she explains. “It’s a strange picture of perfection—but there is an eerie monotony that creeps in. It can slowly drive a person crazy, that sense of unease under the surface of all this beauty and promise.” 

Her work often uses trained actors in staged settings, acting out ambiguous and uneasy melodramatic narratives in colourful costumes. Populated by seductively stylised women, Prager’s photographs resemble vintage Hollywood movie stills. References to the films of Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch and the photographs of Cindy Sherman and Gregory Crewdson abound in her work.

Her work can be found in institutions worldwide such as The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Elgiz Museum of Contemporary Art in Istanbul.