Alex Prager

Alex Prager (born November 1, 1979) is an American artist, director, and screenwriter based in Los Angeles.

Prager is best known for making large-scale photographic works that distort the boundaries between reality and artifice, often centered around the human condition. Her photographs and first short film were included in MoMA's New Photography 2010 exhibition and in 2023, Prager was named one of the "25 New Faces of Independent Film."

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.

Artwork Prager's work is characterized by distinctive mise-en-scène, ambiguous and open-ended narratives, highly staged scenes, unique characters, timeless costumes, and saturated colors. Her work is notably influenced by golden-era period styles like film noir and Technicolor, mythology, and works by Dutch Renaissance painters.

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.

Employing traditional filmmaking techniques, effects, and large-scale productions, Prager often constructs complex scenes with elaborate characters and saturated, commonplace settings.

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. 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."

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. 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."

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. The series of highly staged images of crowds in various familiar settings indicated a distinctive shift in the artist's practice. The exhibition included photographic work and a three-channel installation of the film (2013), featuring Elizabeth Banks.

In 2018, Nathalie Herschdorfer, Director of Photo Elysée, curated a major exhibition marking the first mid-career survey of Prager's work. The exhibition traveled internationally to institutions including The Photographers' Gallery, Museum of Fine Arts Le Locle, Foam Fotografiemuseum, Fotografiska, Stockholm, among others.

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. Fotografiska, Stockholm, Sweden; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA, among others.

Recent work 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.

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.

In 2024, Prager debuted Western Mechanics, her first exhibition with Lehmann Maupin in Seoul. The new body of photographic work circumvented linear narrative and instead focused on the presentation of emotionally charged vignettes.

Film In 2010, Alex Prager started Big Valley Pictures to produce independent films.

Prager's films are often psychological thrillers touching on horror and characterized by depictions of isolation, fear, artifice, and the need for connection. Her most recent short film, "Run" (2022), premiered at the Santa Barbara Film Festival and was nominated for the 2023 SXSW Grand Jury Award. In 2023, she was named one of the "25 New Faces of Independent Film" by Filmmaker Magazine.

Prager's debut feature film DreamQuil—described as a cautionary tale about identity, automation, and what makes us human set in the near distant future—had its world premiere at SXSW Film & TV Festival in March 2026. The film stars Elizabeth Banks and John C. Reilly.

Commercial work Prager has been commissioned to shoot features and campaigns by luxury brands and prominent publications such as Vogue, New York Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, W Magazine, Garage, Bottega Veneta, Dior, Hermés, Tiffany, and Lavazza.

She has also directed commercials for several prominent international brands including Apple, Hermés, Miller, Anheuser-Busch, Vimeo, and most recently, Cartier, featuring Elle Fanning, in 2023.

Reception 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."

Publications

Polyester, Alex Prager Studio. 2007. . The Big Valley / Week-end, M+B and Yancey Richardson Gallery. 2010. . Compulsion, Michael Hoppen Gallery. 2012. . Face in the Crowd, Corcoran. 2013. . La Grande Sortie, Lehmann Maupin. 2016. . Alex Prager: Silver Lake Drive, Thames & Hudson. 2018. . 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. .

Filmography Despair (2010) La Petite Mort (2012) Play the Wind (2019) Part One: The Mountain Interviews (2021) The Big Valley, Michael Hoppen Gallery, London, 2008; Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York City, 2009 Week-end, Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York City, 2010 Compulsion, Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam, 2012 Mise-en-scène, Savannah College of Art and Design, 2013 Face in the Crowd, Corcoran Gallery of Art, 2013; The Arts Club, London, 2014; M+B Gallery, Los Angeles, 2014; Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York City, 2014; Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, 2015 Alex Prager, The National Gallery of Victoria, Australia, 2014 Alex Prager, Istanbul '74, Istanbul, 2015 La Grande Sortie, Lehmann Maupin, New York City, 2016 Alex Prager: Silver Lake Drive, The Photographers' Gallery, London, 2018; Museum of Fine Arts Le Locle, Le Locle, Switzerland, 2018; Foam Fotografiemuseum, Amsterdam, 2019; Fondazione Sozzani, Milan, 2019 Welcome Home, Fotografiska, Stockholm, 2019; Fotografiska, Tallinn, Estonia, 2020 Play the Wind, Lehmann Maupin, New York City, 2019 Alex Prager: Farewell, Work Holiday Parties, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, 2020 Part One: The Mountain, Lehmann Maupin, London, 2022 Alex Prager: Big West, Lotte Museum of Art, Seoul, 2022 Part Two: Run, Lehmann Maupin, Palm Beach, 2022; Lehmann Maupin, New York City, 2023 Western Mechanics, Lehmann Maupin, Seoul, 2024 U.S. Department of State, Art in Embassies Program, New Delhi, India, 2024

Group exhibitions New Photography 2010, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2010 No Fashion, Please: Photography Between Gender and Lifestyle, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, 2011 Another Story: Photography from the Moderna Museet Collection, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 2011 Portrait of a Generation, The Hole, New York City, 2012 At the Window: The Photographer's View, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2013 The Noir Effect, Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles, 2014 Open Rhapsody: A Journey Into Photography and Video Collections, Beirut Exhibition Center, Beirut, 2015 Telling Tales: Contemporary Narrative Photography, McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, 2016 In Production: Art and the Studio System, Yuz Museum Shanghai, Shanghai, 2019 Flora / Fauna, Josée Bienvenu Gallery, New York City, 2019 Terminal, City Gallery Wellington, Wellington, NZ, 2020 Oil. Beauty and Horror in the Petrol Age, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg, 2021 Still Present!, 12th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany, 2022 Killing TV, Tai Kwun, Hong Kong, China, 2023 Photography: Real and Imagined, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia Fragile Beauty: Photographs from the Sir Elton John and David Furnish Photography Collection, Victoria & Albert Museum South Kensington, London, United Kingdom, 2024

Awards 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