Pierre Apraxine

author

Russian-born / French^[1] b. 1934, Tallinn, Estonia^[1] d. 26 February 2023, New York, USA^[2,3] active 1975–2023

Pierre Apraxine (1934–2023) was a Russian-born curator and connoisseur of photography. Born in Tallinn, Estonia, into a noble family, he relocated to Brussels before World War II. He became a leading expert on 19th-century photography and conceptual art. He is best known for his role as the primary curator of the Howard Gilman Paper Company Collection, which was eventually acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2005. Apraxine served as an advisor to industrialist Howard Gilman and was instrumental in building one of the world's most significant private holdings of photographs.^[1,2,4]

• photography collecting
• 19th-century photography

Works by Pierre Apraxine

• 2005 The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult Yale University Press · book · English · ISBN 978-0-300-11136-1
• 2023 The Image to Come: Memoirs of a Collector book · English Autobiography

Exhibitions

• 2004 Le 3ème oeil – photographie et l’occulte / A Perfect Medium – Photography and the Occult Maison Européenne de la Photographie / Metropolitan Museum of Art, Paris / New York · group

References

1. Hauser & Wirth - Pierre Apraxine Biography link
2. 2023 link
3. 2023 link
4. Wikipedia: Pierre Apraxine link