Andrew Prokos
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Andrew Prokos (born 1971) is an
American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...
architectural and
fine-art photographer Fine-art photography is photography created in line with the vision of the photographer as artist, using photography as a medium for creative expression. The goal of fine-art photography is to express an idea, a message, or an emotion. This stand ...
.


Early life

Prokos was born to Greek parents who immigrated to the United States after World War II, settling in Chicago. At an early age Prokos's family moved to Florida, where he grew up and attended the
University of Florida The University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida, United States. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida and a preem ...
, where he graduated with a degree in
Political Science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and Power (social and political), power, and the analysis of political activities, political philosophy, political thought, polit ...
. He first started taking photographs after moving to New York City at the age of 20.


Work

During the mid-1990s Prokos spent two years living in Italy and Greece and traveling through Europe and Turkey. Prokos returned to New York City in 1996, and began working in interactive advertising. Prokos turned to photography full-time in 2002, and received commissions from a variety of clients, including architects, property developers, interior designers, ad agencies, and corporate clients. His photography has been published in numerous magazines, newspapers, and websites, including: ArchDaily, Casa Vogue, Communication Arts, DesignBoom Magazine, Dezeen Magazine, Manhattan Magazine, Metropolis, New York City Monthly, PDN Edu, and others. His photography has also been used in advertising campaigns for numerous companies such as
Lloyds Bank Lloyds Bank plc is a major British retail banking, retail and commercial bank with a significant presence across England and Wales. It has traditionally been regarded one of the "Big Four (banking)#England and Wales, Big Four" clearing house ...
,
Morgan Stanley Morgan Stanley is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered at 1585 Broadway in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. With offices in 42 countries and more than 80,000 employees, the firm's clients in ...
, E&J Gallo,
Abbott Labs Abbott Laboratories is an American multinational medical devices and health care company with headquarters in Abbott Park, Illinois, in the United States. The company was founded by Chicago physician Wallace Calvin Abbott in 1888 to formulate k ...
,
Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, LLC is an American multinational company that operates the luxury hotel chain known as The Ritz-Carlton. The company has 108 luxury hotels and resorts in 30 countries and territories with 29,158 rooms, in addit ...
, and
Evraz EVRAZ plc () is a UK-incorporated multinational steel manufacturing and mining company part-owned by Russian oligarchs. It has operations mainly in Russia as well as the USA, Canada, and Kazakhstan. Its listing on the London Stock Exchange (LS ...
. Prokos is a member of the New York Chapter of the
American Society of Media Photographers The American Society of Media Photographers, abbreviated ASMP, is a professional association of imaging professionals, including photojournalism, photojournalists, architectural photographers, architectural, underwater photographers, underwater, f ...
. In 2012 and 2013 Prokos traveled to Brazil and produced several award-winning series of photographs, including ''Niemeyer's Brasilia''. ''Niemeyer's Brasilia'' captured the surreal
Modernist architecture Modern architecture, also called modernist architecture, or the modern movement, is an architectural architectural movement, movement and architectural style, style that was prominent in the 20th century, between the earlier Art Deco Architectu ...
of Brazilian architect
Oscar Niemeyer Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho (15 December 1907 – 5 December 2012), known as Oscar Niemeyer (), was a Brazilian architect considered to be one of the key figures in the development of modern architecture. Niemeyer was b ...
in
Brasília Brasília ( ; ) is the capital city, capital of Brazil and Federal District (Brazil), Federal District. Located in the Brazilian highlands in the country's Central-West Region, Brazil, Central-West region, it was founded by President Juscelino ...
utilizing stark compositions and long exposure times. In July 2014 Prokos was one of 23 prominent Greek-Americans profiled in a documentary video series entitled ''Greeks Gone West'', produced by the
Embassy of the United States, Athens The Embassy of the United States in Athens (Greek: Πρεσβεία των Ηνωμένων Πολιτειών στην Αθήνα. romanization: ''Presveía ton Inoménon Politeión stin Athína'') is the embassy of the United States in Greece, ...
and
Kathimerini ( Greek: Η Καθημερινή, ; ) is a daily, political and financial morning newspaper published in Piraeus, Athens. Its first edition was printed on 15 September 1919. is considered a newspaper of record and the leading right-wing newspape ...
newspaper. The video was shot on location at Prokos's exhibition at Banco do Brasil in New York. In 2019 Prokos took part in a cultural delegation to the United Arab Emirates, which included prominent photographic artists and curators from the
Guggenheim Museum The Guggenheim Museums are a group of museums in different parts of the world established (or proposed to be established) by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Museums in this group include: * The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Ne ...
in New York City and the A+D Museum in
Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...
. He continued to document the
landscapes A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or human-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the ...
and
cityscapes In the visual arts, a cityscape (urban landscape) is an artistic representation, such as a painting, drawing, print or photograph, of the physical aspects of a city or urban area. It is the urban equivalent of a landscape. ''Townscape'' is ...
of the Emirates of
Dubai Dubai (Help:IPA/English, /duːˈbaɪ/ Help:Pronunciation respelling key, ''doo-BYE''; Modern Standard Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic: ; Emirati Arabic, Emirati Arabic: , Romanization of Arabic, romanized: Help:IPA/English, /diˈbej/) is the Lis ...
,
Abu Dhabi Abu Dhabi is the capital city of the United Arab Emirates. The city is the seat of the Abu Dhabi Central Capital District, the capital city of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, and the UAE's List of cities in the United Arab Emirates, second-most popu ...
,
Sharjah Sharjah (; ', Gulf Arabic: ''aš-Šārja'') is the List of cities in the United Arab Emirates, third-most populous city in the United Arab Emirates, after Dubai and Abu Dhabi. It is the capital of the Emirate of Sharjah and forms part of the D ...
and
Al Ain Al Ain () is a city in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, and the seat of the administrative division of the Al Ain Region. The city is Oman–United Arab Emirates border, bordered to the east by the Omani town of Al-Buraimi. Al A ...
in long-exposure photographs which spanned 4–10 minutes per exposure, as well as large-scale images derived from merging multiple 100 megapixel medium format images, a process known as 'stitching'. This formed the basis of his
conceptual photography Conceptual photography is a type of photography that illustrates an idea. There have been illustrative photographs made since the medium's invention, for example in the earliest staged photographs, such as Hippolyte Bayard's ''Self Portrait a ...
series ''Inverted UAE'', which went on to win numerous awards and be published in the Middle East, the UK and Europe including DesignBoom,
CNN Cable News Network (CNN) is a multinational news organization operating, most notably, a website and a TV channel headquartered in Atlanta. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable ne ...
, and
Harper's Bazaar ''Harper's Bazaar'' (stylized as ''Harper's BAZAAR'') is an American monthly women's fashion magazine. Bazaar has been published in New York City since November 2, 1867, originally as a weekly publication entitled ''Harper's Bazar''."Corporat ...
Art. In 2020 Prokos produced series of experimental and
abstract art Abstract art uses visual language of shape, form, color and line to create a Composition (visual arts), composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. ''Abstract art'', ''non-figurative art'', ''non- ...
. ''Metropolis Abstracted'' presents highly abstracted close-up details of contemporary architecture in New York City,
Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...
, and other major cities. Captured with a very high-definition medium-format camera, the photos went on to be included in Prokos's major solo exhibition ''Andrew Prokos: New Abstraction'' in the United Arab Emirates in 2022. In an interview with Widewalls Art Magazine, Prokos noted that "...when the image is reflected, an entirely new and inherent structure and visual language emerge. People often comment that the images seem to be revealing a hidden symbolism, and they interpret the images in all kinds of ways. So they do become a sort of Rorschach test for the viewer, which is not something that I can honestly claim to be by design but rather an interesting by-product of the process and its effect on the viewer. Metropolis Abstracted is a more psychological series in that sense.".


Awards

Prokos has won numerous awards for his photography, most recently a jury selection at American Photography 37 (2021) for his series ''Metropolis Abstracted'' and a silver medal at the 2021 International Photography Awards in New York for his series ''Inverted''. The same series were honored with honorable mentions at the 2020 and 2021 Prix de la Photographie, Paris (Px3). Prokos' series "Night & Day", which utilizes multiple exposures captured over time to document the transition from day to night in various locations around the world, was selected for American Photography 31 and was awarded two first-place finishes at the 2015 Prix de la Photographie People's Choice Awards. "Night & Day" was previously awarded a silver medal at the 2014 Neutral Density Photography Awards., and was awarded two Honorable Mentions at the 2014 International Photography Awards (Lucies). Prokos's series of fine-art architectural photographs based on the works of architect
Frank Gehry Frank Owen Gehry ( ; ; born February 28, 1929) is a Canadian-American architect and designer. A number of his buildings, including his private residence in Santa Monica, California, have become attractions. Gehry rose to prominence in th ...
, entitled ''Gehry's Children'', was awarded a silver medal at the 2014 Prix de la Photographie, Paris (Px3) for his and Honorable Mention at the 2014 International Photography Awards (Lucies). Prokos's series of photographs of the Brazilian capital at night, entitled ''Niemeyer's Brasilia'', was selected in 2014 by a panel of judges for the Latin American Fotografia 3 collection, and in 2013 was awarded a silver medal at the International Photography Awards (Lucie Awards). Prokos has been awarded with numerous medals in recent years at the Epson International Pano Awards for his
panoramic photography Panoramic photography is a technique of photography, using specialized equipment or software, that captures images with horizontally elongated field of view, fields of view. It is sometimes known as ''wide format photography''. The term has also ...
of cityscapes and landscapes and has also won numerous Honorable Mentions for his photography from the International Photography Awards, the Prix de la Photographie, Paris, the International Color Awards, and the London International Creative Competition.


Collections

Prokos's photographs have been included in several museum collections, including the Museum of the City of New York, 21_21 DesignSight Museum in
Tokyo Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...
, and MART Museum of contemporary art in Rovereto,
Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...
. Corporate art collections displaying Prokos's work include: Diageo North America, Invesco, JP Morgan Chase, Ralph Lauren Corp, Northwestern Mutual, Merrill Lynch & Co, Capital One Bank, Cisco Systems, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Hyatt Hotels, Kimpton Hotels, Moody's Corporation, Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. and numerous others. In 2018 Prokos's work was included in the U.S. State Department's ''Art in Embassies'' program, which places artwork by prominent American artists in embassies around the world. His work is also placed in the Consulate of Brazil in New York and in the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates in Washington DC.


Exhibitions

In early 2022 Prokos was offered an extensive solo exhibition at the Xposure International Photography Festival in
Sharjah Sharjah (; ', Gulf Arabic: ''aš-Šārja'') is the List of cities in the United Arab Emirates, third-most populous city in the United Arab Emirates, after Dubai and Abu Dhabi. It is the capital of the Emirate of Sharjah and forms part of the D ...
,
United Arab Emirates The United Arab Emirates (UAE), or simply the Emirates, is a country in West Asia, in the Middle East, at the eastern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is a Federal monarchy, federal elective monarchy made up of Emirates of the United Arab E ...
. Entitled ''Andrew Prokos: New Abstraction'', the
exhibition An exhibition, in the most general sense, is an organized presentation and display of a selection of items. In practice, exhibitions usually occur within a cultural or educational setting such as a museum, art gallery, park, library, exhibiti ...
included large-scale
abstract photography Abstract may refer to: *"Abstract", a 2017 episode of the animated television series '' Adventure Time'' * ''Abstract'' (album), 1962 album by Joe Harriott * Abstract algebra, sets with specific operations acting on their elements * Abstract of t ...
from his series ''Metropolis Abstracted'' and ''Inverted''. The photographs encompass two separate galleries in order to show the photographs, which are five feet in scale each. In September 2022, the ''New Abstraction'' solo exhibition exhibited at GalleryX, an
art gallery An art gallery is a room or a building in which visual art is displayed. In Western cultures from the mid-15th century, a gallery was any long, narrow covered passage along a wall, first used in the sense of a place for art in the 1590s. The long ...
located on Al Majaz island in Sharjah. A concurrent exhibition in early 2022, ''Andrew Prokos: Architecture'', opened in February at Gallery Estella in
New Orleans New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 ...
. Prokos's large-scale
black and white photography Monochrome photography is photography where each position on an image can record and show a different ''amount'' of light ( value), but not a different color ( hue). The majority of monochrome photographs produced today are black-and-white, ei ...
of New York's famous
landmark A landmark is a recognizable natural or artificial feature used for navigation, a feature that stands out from its near environment and is often visible from long distances. In modern-day use, the term can also be applied to smaller structures ...
buildings were on display in 50 inch wide photographs. In early 2019 Prokos opened his own photography gallery at 368 Broadway in New York's
Tribeca Tribeca ( ), originally written as TriBeCa, is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City. Its name is a syllabic abbreviation of "Triangle Below Canal Street". The "triangle" (more accurately a quadrilateral) is bounded by Canal Str ...
neighborhood. The gallery showcased his large-scale photographs of cityscapes, landscapes, and architecture. Prokos closed the gallery in 2021 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City. In 2015-2016 Prokos's
architectural photography Architectural photography is the subgenre of the photography discipline where the primary emphasis is made to capturing photographs of buildings and similar architectural structures that are both aesthetically pleasing and accurate in terms of re ...
relating to the work of architect
Frank Gehry Frank Owen Gehry ( ; ; born February 28, 1929) is a Canadian-American architect and designer. A number of his buildings, including his private residence in Santa Monica, California, have become attractions. Gehry rose to prominence in th ...
were exhibited in ''Architect Frank Gehry - I Have an Idea'' at
21 21 Design Sight 21_21 Design Sight is a museum in Roppongi in Minato, Tokyo, Japan, which opened in 2007. The museum, a design museum, was created by architect Tadao Ando and fashion designer Issey Miyake. "The idea was to create not only a museum that shows e ...
museum in Tokyo, Japan. In 2014, his photographs of
Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...
were displayed in a solo exhibition at
Banco do Brasil Banco do Brasil S.A. (, ) is a Brazilian financial services company headquartered in Brasília, Brazil. The oldest bank in Brazil, and among the oldest banks in continuous operation in the world, it was founded by John VI, King of Portugal, on ...
in New York entitled ''Brazil: Night & Day - Photographs by Andrew Prokos''. The exhibition was held in conjunction with the Year of Brazil at
Queens College Queens College (QC) is a public college in the New York City borough of Queens. Part of the City University of New York system, Queens College occupies an campus primarily located in Flushing. Queens College was established in 1937 and offe ...
,
City University of New York The City University of New York (CUNY, pronounced , ) is the Public university, public university system of Education in New York City, New York City. It is the largest urban university system in the United States, comprising 25 campuses: eleven ...
. It was the first time that Banco do Brasil had exhibited works by a non-Brazilian artist in New York. ''Brazil: Night & Day - Photographs by Andrew Prokos'' was also exhibited at the Consulate General of Brazil in New York from May 5 - August 10, 2014 to coincide with the Brazil 2014
FIFA World Cup The FIFA World Cup, often called the World Cup, is an international association football competition among the senior List of men's national association football teams, men's national teams of the members of the FIFA, Fédération Internatio ...
. In both 2012 and 2013 Prokos's photographs were selected by a jury panel to be exhibited in the ASMP gallery at the
American Institute of Architects The American Institute of Architects (AIA) is a professional organization for architects in the United States. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C. AIA offers education, government advocacy, community redevelopment, and public outreach progr ...
national convention. Prokos's night photographs of
Coney Island Coney Island is a neighborhood and entertainment area in the southwestern section of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is bounded by Brighton Beach to its east, Lower New York Bay to the south and west, and Gravesend to ...
, Brooklyn were exhibited in 2006 at the
Museum of the City of New York The Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) is a history and art museum in Manhattan, New York City, New York. It was founded by Henry Collins Brown, in 1923Beard, Rick. "Museum of the City of New York" in to preserve and present the history ...
in an exhibition entitled ''Transformed by Light - The New York Night''.


References


External links


Andrew Prokos at the American Society of Media Photographers

Andrew Prokos interview at Widewalls Magazine

Andrew Prokos Artist Profile at Art in Embassies site


* ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6CFVDRod0k Andrew Prokos video interview - Fine Art Photography Weekly {{DEFAULTSORT:Prokos, Andrew 1971 births Living people Photographers from Illinois American architectural photographers Cityscapes American people of Greek descent American landscape photographers American fine art photographers Artists from New York City
New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
Photographers from New York City American abstract photographers