Alex Prager makes a profession out of playing dress-up. Except, she plays dress-up with friends to create staged scenarios of times seemingly long gone yet somehow modern and eerily intriguing.

Now through February 20th at the Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York City, Los Angeles-based photographer Alex Prager, shares her remarkable collection of photographs entitled “Week-end,” a mix of glamour, drama and a twist of disturbing emptiness at once.

These images, it seems, possess a painstaking, choreographed simplicity – an Hitchcockian portrait of a fur-clad, bewigged socialite coldly gazing, a dead-eyed young woman with her head in the stars, a group of girls staring hypnotically toward an off-screen projection – though none of these women make eye contact with either the viewer or each other, for that matter.

Each of these photographs is theatre – tragedy masked in the comedy of unnatural beauty and glitz. The subjects are plasticized, costumed, mannequinlike representations of women that could be us, our mothers, sisters, friends, alter egos or, perhaps, no one at all. It’s hard to tell.

The script of each image is left to interpretation though one can’t help but believe the artist had specific intentions. She’s just not telling. And that’s okay. In a way, there’s great power in the powerlessness of the scenes. Here is an examination of the delicate and ethereal—yet complicated—mystery of the feminine psyche as it manifests on the surface.

This third installment of Alex Prager’s work completes a trilogy of female portraiture— quite extraordinary for this self-trained photographer who gets inspired by her native Los Angeles or what she calls, “A strange picture of perfection.” It’s difficult to argue that sentiment in the modern era—just watch an awards ceremony.

To see more of Alex Prager’s work, go to www.alexprager.com or visit the Yancey Richardson Gallery at 535 West 22nd Street.

For more information, please contact the Yancey Richardson Gallery at 646-230-9610 or info@yanceyrichardson.com.