Alex Prager on her set of La Petit Mort.
We’ve always been fans of Alex Prager’s photography, which often feels as though you’re looking right into the middle of an intriguing story. So when we heard that her upcoming show “Compulsion” would also feature her new film short called La Petit Mort, we were excited to feature her in W.i.g. Magazine. Her film also features music by composer Ali Helnwein and Director of Photography Matthew Libatique (Black Swan, Iron Man, Requiem for a Dream).
Here’s more information: Compulsion opens April 5th at Yancey Richardson Gallery (NYC), April 7th, at M+B Gallery (Los Angeles), and April 20th at Michael Hoppen Contemporary (London). The exhibition will feature a selection of color photographs from the series, as well as the artist’s new short film, La Petite Mort, with accompanying film stills.
La Petite Mort, starring French actress, Judith Godrèche, Prager navigates through the mysteries of death, depicting a woman experiencing the boundaries of her body and those of this world.
MoMA curator Roxana Marcoci has described Prager’s work as “intentionally loaded,” saying “it reminds me of silent movies – there is something pregnant, about to happen, a mix of desire and angst.” Prager’s new work furthers her exploration of subversive narratives through the construction of “scenes” inspired by tragedies drawn from the media, and paired with emotive close-ups of eyes. The eyes, whether interpreted as belonging to the viewer or the subject, operate as a mode of investigation-an aid to decoding the scenes and implicating the viewer by provoking an emotional response.
Inspired by the photography of Weegee and Enrique Metinides, and films such as Metropolis and Un Chien Andalou, Compulsion confirms Prager’s vivid cinematic aesthetic. Unlike her previous work, however, the protagonists here remain anonymous and unreachable. Prager’s new series investigates the complexity of observation within a society inundated by compulsive spectators, as well as the recurrent discourse in photography-that “meaning” is often derived from a multiplicity of gazes.
In addition to provocative juxtapositions, Prager manipulates the scenes through her choice of cropping, continually interrogating the truth content within photography – a trope as old as the medium itself. As artist John Baldessari has noted: “For most of us photography stands for the truth, but a good artist can make a harder truth by manipulating forms…It fascinates me how [one] can manipulate the truth so easily by the way [you] juxtapose opposites or crop the image or take it out of context.” Prager’s altered and manufactured scenes, in conjunction with the evocative eyes removes the images from their original context and allows them to acquire new associations.
In her new short film, La Petite Mort, starring French actress, Judith Godrèche, Prager navigates through the mysteries of death, depicting a woman experiencing the boundaries of her body and those of this world. Prager’s La Petite Mort declares that “the act of dying, and the act of transcendent love, are two experiences cut from the same cloth – the former a grand exit, and the latter a slow escape. Indeed, many of the world’s greatest poets have long considered a passionate interlude as man’s closest moment to seeing god.”
Born in 1979, Alex Prager is a self-taught photographer who lives in Los Angeles, California. Featured in MoMA’s New Photography 2010, Prager’s work has been exhibited at institutions worldwide. Additionally, her photographs are in the permanent collection of several major museums, including MoMA, New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Moderna Museet, Stockholm, among others. Her work has featured in publications such as the New York Times Magazine, Vogue, W Magazine, and Art in America.
