Exhibition: Alex Prager's crowd photos a personal GPS

Alex Prager's photographs might look like film stills from a forgotten Hollywood title half a century ago, but as she reveals at her solo exhibition in Hong Kong, her practice is much more personal than it appears.

"My work is very much about where I'm at psychologically and emotionally in my life," she says.

Prager's recent "Face in the Crowd" series consists of meticulously staged scenes of crowds, mixing the artist's friends and family with extras hired from a casting company and people she spotted in diners. Although her interest in the topic hadn't faded, she felt the urge to channel the "transitional feeling" in her life while working on her latest photos, which are featured at the current show alongside a recent video work.

"I have a lot of other projects happening right now. I just moved into a house that I'm renovating, and I have all these things going on with my family," says the 35-year-old artist.

"It felt like a very transitional time for me where things felt more like echoes of things past, with the feeling of anticipating things to come."

A Los Angeles native who decided to pursue photography after a visit to a William Eggleston exhibition, Prager began to learn her craft when "I had an overwhelming sense that I wanted to do it — now. I didn't see how the pictures in my head that I wanted to make were going to be made quickly enough if I went through school to learn everything, so I just taught myself one thing at a time."