Yorgos Prinos creates photographs that investigate topics operating at the intersection of power, violence, psychology, and politics. Prinos creates his photographs with painterly precision, often highlighting the spaces, communities, and situations that we tend to overlook in our daily lives. These visual vignettes include a range of scenarios, from chaotic courtroom scenes to labourers working in factories, all captured with the intent of creating ethereal moments that express a narrative that invites the viewer to question their ideas related to humanity and nature.

The photos that Prinos captures often convey a sense of stillness, even though the environments where they are taken could seem frenetic and turbulent to the viewer. This tranquillity present within Prinos’s work, combined with photographic techniques that employ the use of coupling, diptychs, triptychs, and controlling light and shadows, has enabled him to build a visual vernacular that operates on a multitude of emotional registers. These registers encapsulate moments of intimacy, pensiveness and self-actualisation juxtaposed with feelings of absurdity, chaos, and mourning. All of these emotions and perspectives give Prinos’s photographs a cinematic tension that invites the viewer to actively engage with the complexities of the human experience.

4:32:00, 2019–2020
Archival pigment print, 70 x 100 cm
Private Collection Dr. Stefanie Peter

4:23:23, 2019–2020
Archival pigment print, 70 x 100 cm
Private Collection Dr. Stefanie Peter

Clenching, London, 2019
Photograph, 51 x 80 cm
Courtesy of the artist
Produced by the Athens Biennale

Man in Crowd I, London, 2019–2020
Photograph, 65 x 90 cm
Courtesy of the artist
Produced by the Athens Biennale

Man in Crowd IΙ, London, 2019–2020
Photograph, 65 x 90 cm
Courtesy of the artist
Produced by the Athens Biennale

Man in Crowd IIΙ, London, 2019–2020
Photograph, 65 x 90 cm
Courtesy of the artist
Produced by the Athens Biennale

Mannequin Head, London, 2019
Photograph, 35 x 50 cm
Courtesy of the artist
Produced by the Athens Biennale

Man with Hand on Head, Los Angeles, 2017–2019
Photograph, 67 x 90 cm
Courtesy of the artist
Produced by the Athens Biennale

Hand and Pocket, London, 2019
Photograph, 60 x 38 cm
Courtesy of the artist
Produced by the Athens Biennale

Blue Suits (16:26:07), London, 2019
Photograph, 70 x 105 cm
Courtesy of the artist
Produced by the Athens Biennale

Blue Suits (16:26:08), London, 2019
Photograph, 70 x 105 cm
Courtesy of the artist
Produced by the Athens Biennale

Laborer, New York, 2016
Photograph, 100 x 150 cm
Courtesy of the artist