Platon

Platon

I’ve had an exciting week of discovery, photographically. I’ve managed not to buy a lens I rather fancy (though this may be a temporary condition). But the main thing is that I’ve picked up some new ideas, and have found a new photographer to look for.

I’d never heard of Platon until there was a short comment on one of Ivan Weiss’s portraits (I think) a few days ago, mentioning two photographers’ names (I’ve forgotten the other one, and can’t find the comment!)



I looked him up, and watched a four-minute YouTube clip about him, which I mentioned here a couple of days ago, and AltImages told me about a 45-minute Netflix documentary, which I watched the same day.

OK, Platon is Greek-born, raised in Britain, lives in the USA, photographs the rich and famous. He’s published three books of stunning portraits. He always shoots on film (so a good subject for Film Friday), using a very limited range of cameras and lenses. And it seems that he can see into the minds of his sitters, into their souls.



He talks to people. He researches them beforehand, but the heart of what he does that you and I don’t is that he is primarily seeking to learn something from each sitter. There’s a connection, there’s contact, and that lets – sometimes makes – his subjects open up. Go and look at his pictures, and you’ll see it immediately.

Things I brought away from the documentary include that he appreciates technicalities, and that his team work the negatives he produces hard: they are by no means straight darkroom prints, but film negatives that have been wrung of every drop of quality and character.



He works close in, often with a wideangle lens, just like you’re supposed not to, and he draws parallels with Greek Orthodox icons in terms of the simplicity of his images. A difference is that limbs are often beautifully, frame-fillingly and expressively arranged. He is severely dyslexic, but makes up for this with a degree of empathy that I am in awe of. But then, I’ve never been beaten to a pulp in London by someone calling me a ‘bloody foreigner’ as he was in his teens: he understands hurt.



His rule is to simplify, not to complicate: and the connection with the sitter is unbroken because he is absolutely on top of the technical side, and there are no cameraback images to chimp. My wife, watching the documentary (as I rewatched it) commented that his subjects have the confidence to sit and look into the camera in a way that she cannot do (at least with me). That’s certainly true of many of them – but he makes the same connections with images of people he photographs for non-commercial projects. I think it’s him…



For the first time, my fingers itch to take some new pictures, and see if I can work on portraits that are well inside the minimum ‘social distancing’ envelope… Apologies that the pictures here are not by Platon: just some close-in portraits of various models I’ve worked with. But close in, focussing – in both senses – on the eyes does give something extra.