Fifteen years ago, Human Rights Watch approached celebrity portrait photographer Platon with a pitch: They wanted him to help educate the public about the human rights crisis in Myanmar by capturing images of the people there. It would be dangerous work, lasting months, without pay. Plato's wife had just given birth. He decided to go anyway.
The trip derailed Platon's career, setting him on a years-long path of confronting those affected and fighting against human rights violations. Now, Platon publishes these photographs in an ambitious book titled The defenders: heroes of the global struggle for human rights, which is accompanied by a large exhibition of portraits at UTA Artists Space in Los Angeles, which can be seen from May 3 to 25.
“I photograph them the way you photograph celebrities and world leaders and models,” Platon says of his subjects in Myanmar. “I photographed them not as victims; I photographed them as strong, resilient human beings who refuse to be broken.” When he returned from Myanmar, he The New Yorker and urged them to publish the photos; after they ran, the media began to “see human rights defenders and activists as heroes,” he says. “It was a different mentality.”
In 2013, Platon formed his own human rights foundation, which gave him the resources to document the Egyptian revolution, as well as in Russia, where he photographed dissidents under Vladimir Putin's regime. He went to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, capturing images of people fighting against sexual violence. He spent an entire year crossing the Mexican-American border, taking photos of families torn apart by immigration policy. The Defenders it is a collection of all this work of the last 15 years.
“I've spent a lot of time in front of powerful people,” says Platon. “They say I've photographed more world leaders now than anyone in history. I've seen dandruff on world leaders. I can see if they're nervous and their eyelids flutter. I feel their pulse. People ask me a lot what I think power is. I think power is something that, if you are lucky enough to acquire it, you must share it to help others.”
