Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/603573
CULTURED 000 ALEX PRAGER PHOTOGRAPHER, FILMMAKER Unflinching images of individuals shot from oblique angles in what appear to be shopping malls but in actuality, are painstakingly created Los Angeles film sets are part and parcel of photographer Alex Prager's idiosyncratic oeuvre. Portraying a sense of isolation is what unites this 36-year-old L.A. native's message in a variety of mediums. But now with a new film, La Grande Sortie, commissioned by the Opéra national de Paris, and with a score by Radiohead's producer, Nigel Godrich, Prager captures a sense of tension between the performers on stage—ballerina Émilie Cozette with her partner Karl Paquette—and the audience watching. The film, along with other new works by the artist, is on view at Galerie des Galeries in Paris, marking her first solo show in France. Why the abrupt departures from airline terminals and shopping centers? "It was a perfectly natural leap," says Prager, whose first film in 2010, Despair, drew upon the 1948 ballet film The Red Shoes. "To me, my film throws into light not simply beauty but also raw emotion and drama along with a sense of life and death." The artist continues to expand her talents beyond provocative photography, performance, video installation and film and has recently been tapped to shoot for Dior and Hermès. "I find to a great degree, reality, unreality, artifice and raw emotion all fall under the same umbrella," she notes of her diverse body of work. Now with Prager's pronounced visibility in the City of Light, as well as acclaim for her work on view at New York's Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Kunsthaus Zürich and the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Prager is reaching an even wider international audience. —Brook Mason CULTURED 311 COURTESY OF GALERIE DES GALERIES