Description
Book SynopsisThe definitive monograph on Alex Prager, one of the truly original image makers of our time. Alex Prager is a photographer and filmmaker whose elaborate sets and complex staging draw on a rich cultural heritage of cinematic style, informed by street photography, to produce work that is unerringly memorable. At once temporal and timeless, bright but shadowed, Prager's images exist within a hyperreal world, deeply rooted in the eerie undertones of Los Angeles, where the line between reality and fiction is blurred. Prager's critically acclaimed work is introduced here, spanning a decade of photographic work and five films. This collection of carefully curated photographs is complemented by an in-depth interview by Nathalie Herschdorfer, director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts Le Locle, Switzerland, and discursive essays by Michael Govan, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Michael Mansfield, executive director of the Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Maine, and Clare
Trade Review'Lavish' - Observer
'Prager has mastered a ‘film still’ aesthetic […] that harks back to the Technicolor shockers of Hollywood’s golden age' - Christie's
'Prager creates dazzling sets that are meticulously structured, making you look twice at the strangeness, beauty and colour of her world … this book brings together the best of her career to date' - New Statesman
'High-glamour, luminous and extremely covetable' - The i Newspaper
'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' - The New Yorker
Table of ContentsIntroduction by Michael Govan
Interview with Alex Prager by Nathalie Herschdorfer
Essay by Clare Grafik
Essay by Michael Mansfield
Behind The Scenes
