Portraits of Power

faces-of-power

The New Yorker has a fantastic photo feature on their site right now. It’s called ‘Portraits of Power’ and features the work of Platon. Here’s the story:

This past September, when nearly all the world’s leaders were in New York for a meeting of the United Nations, Platon, a staff photographer for this magazine, set up a tiny studio off the floor of the General Assembly, and tried to hustle as many of them in front of his lens as possible. For months, members of the magazine’s staff had been writing letters to various governments and embassies, but the project was a five-day-long improvisation, with Platon doing his best to lure the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chávez, and Muammar Qaddafi to his camera.

A great concept, expertly executed. Even better, the feature is interactive and multimedia, complete with short clips of Platon describing the circumstances around every session. (Obama refused to sit, Berlusconi was loving it, Khadafi has ‘no eyes’.) Check it here.

mohamed-nasheed

There's 50 leaders featured in total, but here's one personal favorite, Mohamed Nasheed, President of Maldives, who Platon apparently photographed twice without realizing it. The Maldives is a collection of over a thousand tiny islands located in the Laccadive Sea off the coast of Sri Lanka. 80% of its islands are less than a meter above sea level, making Maldives the front line of climate change. Some estimates say that rising sea levels will make it uninhabitable by the end of the century.

To draw attention to his country’s plight, earlier this year Nasheed organized the world’s first underwater cabinet meeting.