PLATON
GESICHTER DER MACHT
21.02.–22.04.2012
Face to face with the political leaders of our time. A portrait of power at the highest levels.
Commissioned by the New Yorker, Platon made a unique series of political portraits during the 2009 UN-general assembly in New York. In only five days he photographed more than hundred heads of government in a makeshift studio at the UN-building on the East River. The most arresting images of the series are now going to be presented at WestLicht. The show will include images of democratically elected heads of state, as well as dictators, peace activists and cruel rulers. »In a way I treat them all democratically«, Platon says in a statement. »My way of making pictures unifies them: the good, the bad, the powerful, the weak – confused all these are the times in which we live.«
Platon collects the protagonists of the global political scene and puts them into contrast to each other, using frontal esthetics. It's a series of large format images of astounding intensity, playing with facial expressions and features of the portrayed. At the same time his way of portraying is challenging the myth that a photographic image of a face can reveal the true character of a human being.
Platon Antoniou, son of an English mother and a Greek father, was born in London in 1968. He grew up in Greece and studied graphic design, photography and arts in London. His portrait of Vladimir Putin was published on the cover of Time Magazine in 2007. He was awarded the World Press Photo Award, in the most prestigious international photo competition. The book Power Platon with photographs by Platon and an essay by Pulitzer Price winner and editor in chief of the New Yorker David Remnick, was published by Schirmer/Mosel in 2009.
»He is far more than a technician with a knack for access. He does constant battle with the subject’s practiced capacity to evade a penetrating eye.« David Remnick, New Yorker
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