Rachel and Friends, 2009
Deborah, 2009
Rita, 2009
Barbara, 2009all images from arthag.com
Alex Prager
Alex Prager
Alex Prager is a self taught photographers from Los Angeles. She creates images where she dresses up her friends or models in wigs and colorful clothing.
"Her subjects look deliciously camp and over-done in polyester outfits, fiery red hair, garish lipstick and nail polish, and spidery eyelashes heavily caked in mascara. The highly stylized and cinematic images depict Prager's subjects "acting" out roles, "most often [as] a solitary figure absorbed in a personal drama" that is happening outside the frame." - Art Hag
What is intriguing to me and my work is Alex Prager's view on women and in one photo I questioned if the people were real or if they were cutouts. Her idea that all women are acting in some way is very interesting to me. To me our memory plays out scenes as if they were being acted by the people we know. I like that she uses her scene and where she lives as inspiration for her photographs. She thinks about LA as a place "of perfection... with a sense of unease under the surface of all this beauty and promise." It's almost like seeing the place that see lives as scene of a sad story. The way that Prager uses acting, gets me more interested in how my memories can be seen the same way.
"Women adorned with wigs and staged in neon Californian landscapes result in timeless, eerie and compelling images. Her large-format Technicolor photographs draw from the cinematic conventions of the likes of Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch. These visually engaging portraits go deeper than what meets the eye, creating an intriguing and surreal narrative for the women they feature, which hints at a sense of allure and uncertainty."
- artdaily.org
"as well as her belief that deep down "all women are actresses.'"
-Evan Orensten
LINKS:
An interesting video showing her and her studio:
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