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| Alex Prager's "Susie and Friends" (2008) / Courtesy of the artist, Alex Prager Studio and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London |
By Park Han-sol
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| Photographer and filmmaker Alex Prager / Courtesy of the artist, Alex Prager Studio |
But in Alex Prager's painstakingly staged image, the blondes and brunettes, with their curious gazes and inscrutable expressions fixated on one unsuspecting woman in the middle, become agents who hint at the possibility of an untold story ― with an undercurrent of discontent, envy and desire combined into an ugly mix.
Prager's "Susie and Friends" is one of more than 100 photographs and films on display at the Lotte Museum of Art (LMOA) in southern Seoul as part of the Emmy-winning photographer and filmmaker's first-ever, large-scale solo exhibition in Korea, "Alex Prager, Big West."
One way to describe her oeuvre is as a set of meticulously polished images styled with color-saturated, mid-20th century archetypes ― vintage wigs, costumes, props and lighting ― that provide a vague sense of nostalgia, but with a touch of unsettling mystery.
Staging a scene that seems to sit somewhere between replicated reality and cinematic artifice, she leaves her works in the state of a perpetual question for the audience: who are these women? What kinds of thoughts lie behind those gazes? What is their relationship, exactly?
Having grown up in Hollywood in Los Angeles, the 42-year-old has naturally seen her fair share of American pop culture and entertainment-inspired imagery both on screen and out in the streets.
In 2001, a chance to visit the Getty Museum led to her very first encounter with the works of William Eggleston, whose pictorial snapshots of 20th-century Americana earned him the title of "the pioneer of color photography" in The New York Times. Endowed with a new purpose in life, she decided to walk the path of a self-taught photographer, like her predecessor.
In her earlier series on view at the exhibition, from "Polyester" to "The Big Valley" and "The Long Weekend," Prager mixes the perfectly romanticized looks of modern LA's Hollywood with a chaotic mix of hyper-dramatic characters. Behind these aesthetics lies a veiled sense of uneasy darkness ready to ensnare viewers at any given moment.
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| Alex Prager's "Speed Limit" (2019) / Courtesy of the artist, Alex Prager Studio and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London |
As years went by, the photographer has further explored this visual mix of reality and fantasy in her images by taking inspirations from the cinematic language of the key players in Hollywood, including Federico Fellini, Sidney Lumet and Alfred Hitchcock.
"Speed Limit" shows traffic congestion on a highway, one of the defining characteristics of LA. Inspired by a scene from Fellini's film, "8 1/2," where the protagonist is stuck in rush hour traffic, she adds a surreal touch of her own: a bright red car standing vertically after an accident, with its passengers now roaming the road without a care in the world.
Sometimes, she brings forth the cinematic tension by pairing two unlikely photos alongside each other (as in "Compulsion") ― with one large image depicting a scene of staged disaster like a capsized boat, a burning house, a traffic accident and an electrocution, and another portraying a single eye that can't help but to sneak a peek at the tragic yet curious event.
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| Alex Prager's "Pomona" (2021) / Courtesy of the artist, Alex Prager Studio and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London |
At other times, it is the particular placement of the camera that introduces such a sense of heightened tension. In "Face in the Crowd," it takes the position of a camera in a surveillance mode or one that has been mounted on a jimmy jib crane to capture the crowded, yet ironically, emotionally hollow scenery.
In these photos, dozens, or sometimes hundreds, of seemingly ordinary people wait for a traffic light to turn, rush around an airport, sit in a movie theater or unwind at the beach. However, these characters, each with contrived facial expressions and gestures, all look lost in the end. With no one meeting each other's gaze or interacting with one another, they are cut off from the swarm of people surrounding them, despite being a physical part of that very crowd.
The show ends with Prager's latest series, "Part One: The Mountain," which brings the extreme internal chaos experienced by each individual outward by having characters suspended in mid-air in an utmost state of confusion. With the COVID-19 pandemic having thrown the world off the track for over two years, the series seems more timely than ever.
"Alex Prager, Big West" runs through June 6 at the LMOA.
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| Installation view of the exhibition, "Alex Prager, Big West," at the Lotte Museum of Art in southern Seoul / Courtesy of the LMOA |
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