Photographer gets success from vintage look

“The next Annie Leibovitz” is just one of the names being donned upon Alex Prager, an up-and-coming photographer whose bright, punchy work is beginning to turn the heads of art lovers everywhere. Marie Claire featured the artist in a short blurb and compared her to Leibovitz because of her defined style and great success — so much so that she was included in the magazine’s list of “Women on Top Awards,” which profiles “the 18 successful women who are changing the world.

It’s hard to not like photos that have strong composition and are filled with a vibrant color palette, and while Prager achieves this, she goes the extra mile in infusing each photograph with a playful hint of a story. Indeed, a spectator might be originally grabbed by the beautifully bright, retro aesthetic of Prager’s photographs but when looking more closely, each photo reveals something darker, funnier, quirkier and sexier.

In her photo spread Polyester, Prager’s shots of stylish ladies (with names like “Lois” and “Rita”), the viewer gets glimpses of “Deborah” sexily smoking a cigarette while leaning on the trunk of a car, the rest of the scene obscured by the backseat, and a shot of “Irene” sitting in a bright yellow taxicab in front of a liquor store as rain and darkness surround her.

However, perhaps the best thing about Prager’s photographs is that although her photos are self-consciously over-the-top retro, they are also peculiarly timeless. “Molly,” for instance, stands in a vintage dress with hair platinum blond and coifed but she also holds a Starbucks coffee in her right hand. Prager’s photos, which at first seem so rooted in early 1960s America, are truly of no time: They have fantastical outbursts of the 21st century, giving them a surreal, secretive attitude.

Whether or not Prager really is the next Leibovitz, her work is starting to receive the attention it deserves.