The People's Photographer

THE STORY SOUNDS ALMOST TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE. When the late John F. Kennedy Jr. was putting together the nuts and bolts of his upstart publication George, he went on a mission to discover fresh, unknown photographers to shoot portraits of the politicians and celebrities that would grace the pages of his magazine. He became enamored with the gritty photos he found in British underground magazines popular during the late '80s. The majority of these poignant images were taken by a young Londoner named Platon, and JFK Jr. was determined to find him and bring him to George.

"When I began, I didn't know anyone glamorous or famous. We were always cold, it was always raining. It was depressing, and that's the way we took pictures," says Platon, whose collection of photos, Platon's Republic, is being published this month by Phaidon Press. "Kennedy wanted the rawer version of portraiture that he found in London, he wanted to show personalities in a different way. So he whisked me over to America without me understanding the significance of what was happening. He sent me on a roller-coaster ride and he gave me access to the heart of America."

Besides providing him the opportunity to capture the essence of icons such as Martin Scorsese, Rudolph Guiliani and Pamela Anderson, JFK Jr. instilled in Platon the belief that the lens of the camera should always remain democratic. "He said that photography should be for everybody--it should never be for the elite," recalls Platon. "You should always try to show people through your pictures what it's really like to meet somebody. Shoot from the hip and really go for more of the personality and less of the glamorous veneer."

Taking this aesthetic to heart, Platon has photographed a wide range of players on the world's stage, everyone from George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and John Kerry to Marilyn Manson, Ozzy Osbourne and Al Pacino. He's covered the aftermath of September 11 in New York; the funeral of Princess Diana in London; neo-Nazi skinheads in North Carolina; and surviving congressmen who fought in the Vietnam War.

Inspired by his obsession with American television, Platon decided to produce a book of his portraits that would grant people access to the powerful, controversial and exclusive figures that he's photographed. "I got the idea for this book from channel surfing," he says. "You flip from one channel and you see something that's pure pop entertainment like Pamela Anderson. Then you flip to the next channel and it's Larry King talking about a serious subject. You flip again and there's the Osbournes on MTV. There's this feeling that it doesn't matter if it's high or low culture, it's all treated the same. My book is based on that idea that if you turn a page it's like flipping a channel on TV."

Platon's Republic contains over 120 portraits taken over the past decade and includes 30 pages of the photographer's personal scrapbooks, which provide first-person, hand-written, behind-the-scenes accounts of what it was like to meet his subjects.

"This is very much a book of now," he says. "Almost everyone in the book is still growing and evolving every day. It's a book that's living and of our time. If anything, it's looking at the present and seeing ourselves for what we are."

___________________________________________

Melissa Quinlan

Pages: 1 2