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December112009

Platon Shoots Netanyahu, Qaddafi, Obama -- and Many Other Potentates

Filed under: The Squib Report   Tagged: ,

Martin Schneider writes:

It was quite a spree.

My involvement with Emdashes recently has been minimal, but purely for logistical reasons. I've been traveling a tremendous amount and also was not getting the physical magazine shipped to me, and under such circumstances it becomes increasingly difficult to stay engaged with the magazine and feel as if one has anything worthwhile to say. Fortunately, the first problem (constant movement) is now solved, and the second (delivery of magazine) is being remedied even as I write this. I expect to be more engaged in the near future.

I did, however, want to take a moment to lavish praise on Platon's recent gallery of world leaders. I saw it linked at Jason Kottke's glorious weblog, and—well, I was really blown away by it. I can't say that I've seen any work of Platon's that struck me as anything less than excellent, but I don't think I realized just how good the man is until I clicked on all forty-nine snapshots and listened to all forty-nine of his individual comments. If you haven't done so, I urge you to spend a quarter-hour looking at the pictures with some care. The results are fairly astonishing.

The comments are about what you would expect—he generally praises everyone and then makes an observation about each subject's personality and/or physiognomy and sometimes reflects on the circumstances of the meeting or the technical approach he chose for the subject. Most of the pictures are black-and-white facial portraits, but some are in color and some feature the subject's body to some degree. I must say I found it quite impossible to question his judgment in almost any of the cases. They all seemed rather remarkably well done to me.

If Platon is the new Richard Avedon—am I the last person to figure this out?—then I must say The New Yorker made an excellent choice. I have made the transition from sympathetic observer to fan.

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