Exploring Performance Anxiety Through Cinema’s Golden Age

You didn’t have to be alive during Hollywood’s Golden Age to have been affected by Hitchcock’s deep probing of the human psyche or Brando’s bravado. The icons of that era shaped entertainment and our perceptions on performance forever. American artist Alex Prager was born years after the era ended, but its legacies serve as the primary source of inspiration for her photographs and films. The 36-year-old artist is currently having her first Parisian solo exhibition at Galerie des Galeries, consisting of recent photographic works. and also screenings of La Grande Sortie, a short film Prager completed this year.

Prager’s enormous photographic images reveal their influence from cinema as a whole almost immediately. Surreal outdoor scenes of quotidian life filled with a diverse array of people in moments of exasperation or intense contemplation are seen everywhere. The compositions are fascinating to the point of being 'too perfect'; every single individual is visually interesting or enamoring.

Combined with lighting that is so meticulously flawless, it becomes apparent that Prager’s images aren’t an indicator of an incredible street photography talent. Rather, the artist is in control of every aspect of the image, an orchestrated fabrication just like the classic pictures of Hollywood. And just like the iconic films of the Golden Age, Prager’s dramatization of reality ends up probing ideas of the human condition that go beyond what is possible in documentary works.

The other portion of the exhibition consists of Alex Prager’s 2015 film La Grande Sortie. Commissioned by the 3e Scène of the Opéra National de Paris, the 10-minute short also resonates with ideas on performance. Centering on a ballet done by real-life French star Émilie Cozette, the film explores the many anxious and unsettling elements involved in performing before an audience.

After making a slight mistake in her performance, Cozette’s character begins to become increasingly overwhelmed by the pressure of an uninterested audience and continues to mess up further and further. As her own heavy breathing and flashes of vibrant color dramatically envelop the viewer, the film culminates in the ballerina stopping momentarily to see her own self in the audience, who judgmentally displays a look of disgust and exits the theater.

Alex Prager’s theatrical solo exhibition will be on display until January 23rd, 2016 at Galerie Des Galeries in Paris. Her films and photographic works can be viewed here.

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