Maybe you don’t recognize Platon’s name, but it’d be hard to miss his photographs, as they have appeared in Time, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Premiere, Wired and others.
I’ve recently posted some details about my time in New York, but the most fabulous part of my whole week in New York was getting to hear Platon speak about his work and life. (Read what PDN had to say about it).
Platon showed his work and talked about what it took to make the pictures of Larry King, David Beckham, Heath Ledger, Martin Scorsese, Rupert Murdoch, Christopher Walken, Sheryl Crow, Benicio Del Toro, Pam Anderson, Neil Young, Donald Trump, Jake Gyllenhaal, Dr. Dre, Jim Lehrer, Willie Nelson, Jude Law, Elliot Spitzer, Michael Moore, Blondie, Kirk Douglas, James Carville, Spike Lee, Bono, Yoko Ono, Al Gore, Susan Sarandon, Matt Damon, Sylvester Stalone, Mos Def, Edward Norton, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and many, many more.
He said he always asks the subject, “What’s your mantra?” It was great to hear him talk about the wisdom these people left with him after he took their picture. In the end, Platon said his mantra is, “Always master the art of living, and then you’ll be free.”
Also, “I’m a believer that everything takes ten years longer than you think it will. Be relentless. There isn’t a secret to success. You have to have talent, but you have to also be relentless. Agression won’t get it. But how much you love it does”.
Pictured above – Samples of Platon’s work.
Pictured below – Platon at PhotoPlus Expo
2 Comments
its late….i know! i love the image of putin- i love the blue cold upcloseness.
Thanks Ashley. He spent a lot of time telling the story of what it took to make this image. He waited in the hotel for five days. Then he got the call to go to the house. He waited outside in the snow for 2 hours while some guards went through his gear. Then waited 8 hours in some office in Putin’s house. This whole time, he never knew if Putin would actually agree to be photographed. Platon said that he is is the only one (that he knows of) that has photographed Putin in a formal sitting. There are other photographs of him in a photo journalistic setting, but not a formal sitting like this.