Alex Prager

How I Got Here: Alex Prager

As a major new exhibition looking back at ten years of her work opens at the Photographers’ Gallery in London, we talk to US artist Alex Prager about teaching herself photography and the complex stories that lie beneath her images

Alex Prager creates imagery that is glossy and cinematic, yet doused in black humour and a creeping sense of anxiety. Her art wears its references on its sleeve, with Prager openly playing homage to the likes of Alfred Hitchcock, Cindy Sherman, Martin Parr and Stan Douglas in her photographs and films, yet weaving the iconic imagery drawn from these masters with her own stories and personal history. The result is work that is absorbing and ambiguous, which always hints at a wider narrative taking place just out of sight.

CR talked to Prager at the opening of her exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery, and discussed how she first got into photography, the role of the audience in her work, how she creates her epic productions (which often feature hundreds of extras), and how stage fright has impacted on her personally and on the art that she creates.