[3][4] During a return to Estonia in 1941 to safeguard family property, his father was arrested by the Red Army and executed in Leningrad.
[3] In 1969, he received a Fulbright scholarship and moved to New York, where he worked at the Museum of Modern Art until a union walkout in 1973.
[3] Apraxine developed an interest in 20th-century photography while employed at the Marlborough Gallery, learning under painter and photographer Paul Katz.
[3] Apraxine was part of a group of photography enthusiasts known as the "Eye Club," which included curator Françoise Heilbrun, art dealers André Jammes and Gérard Lévy, and collector Sam Wagstaff.
[3] Apraxine co-curated several exhibitions, including The Waking Dream (1993), La Divine Comtesse: Photographs of the Countess de Castiglione (2000), and The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult (2005) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.