Alex Prager Shoots Hollywood Stars as Cinematic Villains
Brad Pitt, Kirsten Dunst, Ryan Gosling and more as baddies.
We couldn't think of a better photographer than Alex Prager to portray Hollywood stars as classic fim villains. The New York Times apparently agrees; they commissioned the photographer, who recently shot Lara Stone being whisked away by a tornado for a Mercedes Benz short film, to make a series of approximately one minute films featuring inveterate and of-the-moment actors ranging from Gary Oldman to Jessica Chastain, Viola Davis to Ryan Gosling, displaying their homicidal, sociopathic, vampiric, deranged sides.
Prager, whose style is defined by its retro, narrative-heavy, deeply atmospheric cinematic qualities, isn't new to designing shoots around classic films. Her photos are inspired by, and often reference, the work of Hitchcock, David Lynch and Federico Fellino. The inspirations for the photos and short films are in some cases obvious - Davis as Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest, Michael Shannon as Gordon Gekko from Wall Street, and Rooney Mara as Alex from A Clockwork Orange, for example - while others are a little more ambiguous, so look here for all the villains referenced, here for the awesome short films and below for some of our favourite photographs.
Prager has a new exhibition, Compulsion, opening in New York, London and Los Angeles in April.
