(New York) – The Matthew Marks Gallery is sponsoring a limited-edition sale of 20 portraits of world leaders by Platon, staff photographer at The New Yorker and contributor of iconic covers to Time Magazine and other publications around the globe.
Platon and Human Rights Watch have worked in partnership on groundbreaking projects to celebrate human rights activists around the world, including portraits of Burmese monks and Egyptian protest leaders. The portfolios have been published in The New Yorker and dozens of media outlets worldwide.
The 20 images to be sold are drawn from Power, Platon's new book published this year by Chronicle Books featuring more than 100 portraits of world leaders. They include Barack Obama, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Tony Blair, Robert Mugabe, and Silvio Berlusconi, as well as one man apparently out of power – Muammar Gaddafi.
These portraits are of leaders who, for better or worse, have been influential in their own countries and the world at large. Some have promoted human rights values and some have undermined them; quite a few have done both. The proceeds from the sale, beginning September 8, 2011, will help Human Rights Watch take on those who abuse human rights around the globe, including some of those whose portraits are being sold.
“We're using images of the world's most powerful people to underwrite their courageous critics,” Platon said. “The sale of these portraits of the powerful will benefit the powerless.”
Platon received the highest security clearance at the United Nations to create intimate, close-up photographs of the world's leaders as they stepped off the podium after addressing the UN General Assembly.
“We're pleased to support the important advocacy of Human Rights Watch with a presentation of Platon's extraordinary images,” said Jeffrey Peabody, director of the Matthew Marks Gallery in New York.
Platon has created a small, limited edition of the 20 images that will be available for sale individually or as a set. They are being sold through the gallery and at www.hrw.org/features/facing-power.
The gallery will exhibit the 20 images from September 15-17 at 523 W. 24th St., in Manhattan's Chelsea district.
On September 15 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m, Platon and Carroll Bogert, deputy director of Human Rights Watch for external relations, will present the work with a lecture on their collaboration, introduced by The New Yorker editor David Remnick.
Human Rights Watch said the partnership with a portraitist of Platon's caliber enables the organization to tell human rights stories in a fresh and vivid way through elite global media, using high-quality, high-impact content.
“Platon opens new doors for Human Rights Watch in media all over the world,” Bogert said. “His compelling portraits of activists give us a new way to communicate our work that transcends language and culture.”
Human Rights Watch conducts research and advocacy in 90 countries around the world. It accepts no funding from any governments in order to maintain its independence.
In his introduction to Power, Remnick described Platon’s special talent: “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. More often than not, victory is his.”
