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Alex Prager: Silver Lake Drive
Alex Prager
£40.00
Compelling, luminous, hyperreal: the first career retrospective of one of the stars of art photography and filmmaking
See InsideOverview
Alex Prager is one of the truly original image makers of our time. Working fluidly between photography and film she creates elaborate scenes that reference a wide range of influences, including Hollywood and experimental cinema, popular culture and street photography. These delicately staged compositions produce a distinct aesthetic of still and moving images that are familiar yet strange, utterly compelling and unerringly memorable.
Silver Lake Drive is the first career retrospective of this rising star, one who has won both popular acclaim and the recognition of the art establishment. It summarizes Prager’s creative trajectory and offers an ideal introduction for the popular ‘breakout’ audience who may have only recently encountered her work. Structured around her project-oriented approach, Silver Lake Drive presents more than 120 images from her career to date: from the early Polyester and Big Valley series, through her first films and collaborations with the actor Bryce Dallas Howard, to the tour-de-force of Face in the Crowd – shot on a Hollywood sound stage with over 150 performers – and her 2016 commission for the Paris Opera, La Grande Sortie.
Supported by a major exhibition, and including an introduction by Michael Govan, Director of LACMA, essays by Clare Grafik of The Photographers’ Gallery and Michael Mansfield of the Ogunquit Museum of American Art, and an in-depth interview with Alex Prager by Nathalie Herschdorfer of the Museum of Fine Arts, Le Locle, Silver Lake Drive will be an essential publication for those who follow Prager’s career and all with an interest in and appreciation of contemporary art.
Reviews
'Lavish'
Observer
'Prager’s work combines technical perfection with an old-school Hollywood imagination'
The Herald
'Prager has mastered a ‘film still’ aesthetic […] that harks back to the Technicolor shockers of Hollywood’s golden age'
Christie's
'Prager is a true alchemist and once you step foot in her world, nothing is how it seems'
AnOther
'You can’t help but stop and stare at an image by Alex Prager'
It's Nice That
'An essential collectible for any photographic, cinematic and visual art enthusiasts out there'
.Cent
'Luminous'
SLEEK
'High-glamour, luminous and extremely covetable'
The i newspaper
'Cinematic allusions that combine the romantic, anxious and surreal'
Elephant Magazine
'Grab[s] your attention and refuses to give it back'
Strong Words Magazine
'Prager’s distinctive works cross the worlds of art, fashion, photography and film, exposing the human melodrama and dark unsettling undercurrents that are threaded in her subject matter'
Creative Review
'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
Product Information
Book Details
Format: Quarterbound/PLC (with bellyband)
Size: 30.5 x 24.5 cm
Extent: 224 pp
Illustrations: 120
Publication date: 14 June 2018
ISBN: 9780500544976
Contents List
Essay by Michael Govan • Polyester • The Big Valley • Week-End & The Long Weekend • Interview with Nathalie Herschdorfer • Compulsion • Essay by Clare Grafik • Face in the Crowd • Films • Essay by Michael Mansfield • La Grande Sortie • Behind the Scenes
About the Author
Alex Prager (b. 1979) is a photographer and filmmaker. Her work is represented in the collections of major museums including MoMA; the Whitney Museum of American Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Her editorial work has featured in publications including Garage, Vogue and W, and her film series Touch of Evil, commissioned by The New York Times Magazine, won an Emmy Award in 2012.
List of Contributors
Michael Govan, Nathalie Herschdorfer, Clare Grafik, Michael Mansfield
