NEW YORK, NY.- Currently live for bidding on artnet Auctions, Top Pics features photographic works that have shown exceptional performance at auction worldwide. From classic photographs to works by blue-chip artists, this exciting sale highlights sought-after images by notable photographers such as Massimo Vitali, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Alex Prager, Terry O’Neill, David LaChapelle, Nan Goldin, Peter Beard, Marilyn Minter, and Nobuyoshi Araki, among others. Top Pics is live for bidding now through February 26. View the sale HERE.

Featured here is a detail from the complete Face in the Crowd Box Set, which includes: 6 film stills (each 12.5 x 21 inches), one DVD of single-channel Face in the Crowd, and one copy of the sheet music from Face in the Crowd by Ali Helnwein.

Face in the Crowd was Alex Prager's 2013-2014 two-part exhibition which featured large-scale film stills of elaborately staged crowd scenes, as well as an immersive three-channel video installation. Shot on a Los Angeles soundstage in 2013, Face in the Crowd was Prager’s most multifaceted and ambitious work up to that date. The artist directed hundreds of actors on constructed sets to create portraits of large crowds at lobbies, beaches, movie theaters and other public spaces. The characters, clothing, hairstyles, and poses were all carefully chosen by the artist to convey a range of time periods from mid-century to present, and recall cultural references from street photography to classic Hollywood cinema. Alex Prager: Face in the Crowd was exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. in 2013.

The star of the film is actress Elizabeth Banks, who leads the viewer on a journey through the crowd wordlessly expressing a range of emotions including isolation, sadness, confusion, curiosity, and anxiety. In the film, the crowd scenes were juxtaposed with confessional monologues, in which characters poignantly relate their own stories and insights. Whereas Prager’s large-scale film stills of crowds expose the disconnection between individuals in society, her film explores the unspoken connections among individuals and is a reminder that we are part of something larger than ourselves.

American photographer and filmmaker Alex Prager is from Los Angeles, California, where she currently lives and works. Prager has received the FOAM Paul Huf Award (2012), as well as other honors. The artist's editorial work has appeared in Vogue and W. Prager received an Emmy Award in 2012 for her film series Touch of Evil, commissioned by The New York Times Magazine.