Meet the Team! is a sort of zine/catalog/exhibition guide that accompanied Alex Prager’s Farewell, Work Holiday Parties at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, November 21, 2020 – January 3, 2021. It’s somewhat different than Prager’s photographic and film work, but it’s also undeniably Prager.

‘Play the Wind‘ was Alex Prager’s exhibition of photographs and video at Lehmann Maupin, September 5 – October 26, 2019, and Play the Wind is the comic-book styled gallery flyer/guide thing from that show. As a fan of Prager’s work that can’t afford her artworks, it was an easy buy.

Back in the halcyon days of, say, February 2020, when I was busy traveling for work, flying and Lyft-ing without a care (or a mask), when most everyone else was mostly living however they had always lived, worried about whatever they had always worried about, the thought of suddenly waking up to empty streets, quiet skies, shuttered businesses was the stuff of dreams nightmares. Now, 17, 18 months later, well, it’s more or less normal and the novelty of it all wore off long, long ago.

But when it first started, there was a newness, a sort of optimism and wonder in some quarters. Many many people took the opportunity to start new projects: witness the uncommonly low stocks at garden centers and home improvement stores. And every photo/art/meditation podcast I listen to encouraged starting up a new project, take advantage of the time, etc. The Distant Zines I briefly reviewed earlier appeared quickly, but maybe the first—in creation if not publication—was Matt Day‘s Social Distancing.

The Distant Zines (at time of writing they’re up to Vol. 5 and 6) arose from an instagram hashtag #socialdistancinglandscape, and each zine features images from two or three photographers. They’re all designed by Matthew David Crowther, and I think they all came through Nathan Pearce.

If Volume 1 is a sort of conversation between Emmerson German and Tim Carpenter, Volume 2 is a party line between Pearce, Rachael Banks, and Crowther.