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Photographer Alex Prager Turns Her Lens On Modern Loneliness

For "Face in the Crowd" the artist taps actress Elizabeth Banks to shine a light on urban anxiety.

Artist Alex Prager is known for her female heroines who straddle the line between a Hitchcock blonde and a Cindy Sherman doll-woman; semi-tragic femmes whose placid exteriors hide immense internal tension. A self-taught photographer, Prager falls far beyond this invented spectrum of womanhood--as a headstrong teenager, Prager dropped out of high school to work her way through Lucerne peddling Swiss army knives, only to come across the work of William Eggleston at age 20, which ultimately inspired her to pursue a career in photo. Slowly working her way through the various indie art channels of LA, Prager built her name creating evocative yet unsettling pictures for a range of outlets, most notably winning an Emmy for her work with the New York Times. This winter Prager opens her first solo show at NYC's Lehmann Maupin Gallery with Face in the Crowd, a colorful multimedia exploration of loneliness, connection, and identity in the crush of urban shuffle. Along with a series of staged photos and close-up shots, Prager also created an immersive video installation within the gallery walls staring Elizabeth Banks as a Grace Kelly doppelganger, flung like a human rag roll into the oncoming horde of pedestrians.

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Inspired by her own brushes with agoraphobia and isolation, brought on both by her visits to major metropolises like New York City and the churning demands that come with being an art star on the rise, Prager has channeled her feelings of fear and uneasiness into a full-scale experience viewers can literally wrap themselves in.

The viewing area at Lehmann Maupin simulates the feeling of being pushed and pulled in a crowd.

As part of the short film (still seen above) Prager asked several of the extras to speak on their own life experiences, their stories filtered through the lens of each character's assigned persona. The results are something half-truth, half-mystery, leaving the audience to decipher which is which.

Prager's most ambitious project to date, the artist assembled hundreds of cast members, shipping in 20 tons of sand for some of the exhibit's beach scenes. "I wasn't trying to make things as complicated and expensive as possible," Prager protested during our recent trip the Lehmann Maupin preview. "Logistically it just worked better that way." It was also important to Prager that she knew some of extras in order to color the photos with a feeling of intimacy. "I wouldn't just do a crowd shoot with all strangers, I wanted that really important connection and the energy that I have with my friends and family."

Many of the static shots on display in the gallery were taken directly from the film as part of a strategy to create both the film and photos in tandem."Initially this was just supposed to be stills. But once I saw how big it was getting I didn't want to miss the opportunity to jump in and show some kind of moving story," Prager says. "[So] I shot both the stills and the film simultaneously. We kind of scheduled it so I would have 20 minutes to shoot the film, and 40 minutes to shoot the images."

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Prager on the set of Face in the Crowd, as documented by the New York Times.

"We're showing the side of the crowd that can become a sea of people before becoming overwhelming. But I also wanted to show the other side of the crowd that is all the actual stories within the crowd. I just think everyone is so interesting--and we forget about that when we're in crowds. I wasn't expecting it [the interviews] to be so intense and so interesting."

Alex Prager's immersive three-channel video installation_ will be on display at 540 West 26th Street from January 9th-February 22nd, alongside a group of related film stills. Lehmann Maupin’s 201 Chrystie Street gallery will also be showcasing a series of related large-scale photographs. For more info click here._

Lehmann Maupin’s exhibition will run concurrent with Prager’s first museum exhibition in the United States at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, on view through March 9.

Alex Prager: Face in the Crowd from Corcoran Gallery of Art.