Andrew Prokos

Andrew Prokos (born 1971) is an American architectural and fine-art photographer.

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, where he graduated with a degree in Political Science. 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, Morgan Stanley, E&J Gallo, Abbott Labs, Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, and Evraz. Prokos is a member of the New York Chapter of the American Society of Media Photographers.

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 of Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer in Brasilia utilizing stark compositions and long exposure times. The series was published in a full-page article in Correio Braziliense, the main newspaper of the capital city of Brasilia in November, 2013. The photographs from ''Niemeyer's Brasilia'' received worldwide acclaim and went on to be published in twelve countries in seven languages, including: United States, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Greece, Spain, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Israel, New Zealand, Japan, China, and Malaysia. 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 and Kathimerini 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 in New York City and the A+D Museum in Los Angeles. He continued to document the landscapes and cityscapes of the Emirates of Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah and Al Ain 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 series ''Inverted UAE'', which went on to win numerous awards and be published in the Middle East, the UK and Europe including DesignBoom, CNN, and Harper's Bazaar Art.

In 2020 Prokos commenced work on new series of experimental and abstract art. ''Metropolis Abstracted'' presents highly abstracted close-up details of contemporary architecture in New York City, Boston, 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 states ''"With Metropolis Abstracted, I started to play with mirroring the close-up architectural details and facades. Each detail is captured with the express intent of forming a much more complex composition in the end. What I did not anticipate so much is that Metropolis Abstracted is really about the element of surprise. Looking at the single captured architectural detail, it may seem mundane and not very interesting on its own. But 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 fine art 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, 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 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, and MART Museum of contemporary art in Rovereto, Italy. 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, United Arab Emirates. Entitled ''Andrew Prokos: New Abstraction'', the exhibition included large-scale abstract photography 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 will be on view at GalleryX, an art gallery located on Al Majaz island in Sharjah with a focus on presenting works from the world's top fine art photographers to the Middle East region.

A concurrent exhibition in early 2022, ''Andrew Prokos: Architecture'', opened in February at Gallery Estella in New Orleans

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