"Pause reality" - portrait maker Platon on photography, power and AI

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Platon, photographer: Pause reality. Just pause it. We're all striving to do that. Photography actually does that.

Robin Pomeroy, host, Radio Davos: Welcome to Radio Davos, the podcast from the World Economic Forum that looks at the biggest challenges and how we might solve them. This week I speak to one of the world’s most successful portrait photographers.

Platon: I'm known now as the photographer of power. Some of the most powerful people are the most scared.

Robin Pomeroy: Platon has been face to face with some of the most famous people of that last half-century - and he gives us a glimpse into what they talked about in the intimate space of the photographer’s studio.

Platon: I had the great privilege to work with Muhammad Ali. And he whispered something in my ear and he said, I have a confession to make. I wasn't as great as I said I was. That's the biggest confession I ever heard in my life, man.

Robin Pomeroy: You can watch the whole interview - first published on our sister podcast Meet the Leader - on the World Economic Forum’s YouTube channel - where you’ll see some of the pictures Platon made - of presidents, dictators and the poor and oppressed.

Platon: Our duty is to ask really important questions. What is fair? What is not fair? What is right? What is wrong? And what is a leader?

Robin Pomeroy: Follow Radio Davos wherever you get your podcasts, or visit wef.ch/podcasts where you will also find our sister programmes, Meet the Leader - long-form interviews like this one with people who have excelled in their field, and Agenda Dialogues, the full audio from some of the best discussions at World Economic Forum events.

I’m Robin Pomeroy at the World Economic Forum, and with photgrapher Platon talking to Meet the Leader…

Platon: What is a leader? I'll tell you a story about a leader.

Robin Pomeroy: This is Radio Davos

Robin Pomeroy: There's a Netflix documentary that is a kind of a profile of you. And I think the first words on that programme are you saying. I'm not really a photographer at all?

Platon: Well, I'm actually lying there.

Because photographer - everyone's a photographer now. And photographers get very geeky and nerdy about the craft. And I realised after a time that actually talking about the craftsmanship of photography is a waste of valuable time. Let's just say I dedicated my life to mastering the art of photography.

Now, let's put that aside and focus all our time on talking about the things that actually matter. What am I photographing? Who am I photographing? What does it mean? What does it, what kind of message does that send out into society? What kind of respectful debate can I provoke with that image? Can I use my work as a cultural provocateur?

Robin Pomeroy: What do you mean by that, cultural provocateur?

Platon: I was trained by George Lois. For those who don't know who George Lois was, he passed away sadly, not that long ago. He was the world's greatest creative director. He did all the famous covers of Esquire magazine in the 1960s. Andy Warhol drowning in a giant can of Campbell's soup or Muhammad Ali portrayed as Saint Sebastian with all the arrows in him.

So he was a cultural provocateur. He kind of invented that term, that phrase. You use your skill set to provoke society into a respectful debate.

And I think in today's time when we are facing so much division, there's so much suspicion of each other, there are very powerful forces pulling us apart, whether it's political, whether it's social media, is creating tribalism.

There's so many reasons why we can't seem to come back together.

George Clooney actually once said to me, we have more connectivity than we've ever had before. More information at our fingertips than we've ever had before. And yet, somehow we seem to know less.

If you want to get the news today, you will probably go to a source online that confirms what you already believe. And the danger is that we're all now trapped in our echo chamber. And that magical thing, that beautiful thing called a shared experience, where we all come together and have a central debate about the things that we often disagree on, that's rapidly disappearing.

Now, with that said, that is why I care so much about the community at the World Economic Forum. It is a shared experience. There are so many different types of people I meet every year at Davos. Of course, people who have never been to Davos see it in a different way. But if you go there, I meet wonderful people like Angelique Kidjo, who's dedicated her life to fighting for women's rights and fighting racism. I've recently become good friends with Nile Rodgers, one of the most inspiring people on the planet, who's brought so much joy to millions of people around the world with his music and his positive message of We Are Family, let's come together.

Robin Pomeroy: I met, I interviewed him in Davos. Just a joy.

Platon: Absolute joy. So there are these incredible people, incredible people in the NGO world who I've become very dear friends with over the years. And we are here to help build bridges. We're not here to claim territory. We're not here to fight for attention.

We all believe as a community of cultural leaders that culture can become a bridge. And it can often, you hold up a mirror to society and help society see itself.

Right now, there's a lot of discussion about democracy, but I can't help feeling that people are misinterpreting the real meaning of democracy.

Democracy is a Greek word, ancient Greek word. It's made of two separate words: demos and kratia - demokratia. What it actually means is, demos is the people. Kratia is power. It actually means power to the people. And true democracy is not winning the debate. It's having the debate. So we are here to provoke that debate. As long as we are respectful and we listen as much as we speak. Maybe it's better to listen even more than we speak. Maybe it's important to be less judgemental and more curious.

Cultural leaders are notoriously curious. They ask questions. They have their eyes open. They see things most people don't see. And I think it's a testament to the World Economic Forum that we're made to feel very welcome here. And we've been given a place at the table.

Robin Pomeroy: You just said sometimes it's better to listen more than speak. I've seen in that documentary how you approach taking a photograph. In that case, it was Colin Powell. And you crouched down on the floor, and it's also in the movie we just saw, which we will come to, about refugees that you made with the UNHCR, the UN refugee agency. And you have this method. I'm just wondering where that comes from, where you, before you're taking any photos, you're crouching down below their eyeline, getting up almost right in their face, actually. And I'm wondering, what are you trying to achieve there?

Platon: I've watched all those big time American chat shows. And for me, and this is just my personal opinion. The set up there breaks every rule in my book. The person who is being interviewed is sitting on a sofa, quite far away from the host of the show. The host of the show is sitting higher on a chair. It's like a cliché of exercising power, something that Charlie Chaplin played on when he made that amazing movie, The Great Dictator. Struggling with Mussolini, who's going to be higher in the meeting?

For me. I have to earn my sitter's trust. A good picture is not gotcha journalism. That's easy to do. That's a hit job. And that's based on judgement.

For me, true curiosity is to think of my subject, care about their humanity, even if I fundamentally disagree with some of their policies. And I have photographed many people, many dictators who I disagree with fundamentally.

But what's really important is to tune in to their frequency.

Everyone has their unique frequency. It's like an old radio set. And sometimes you turn the dial and the signal's weak. There's a lot of static. Sometimes you turn the dial into a very clear signal. People are like that. Either way, whether it's difficult or hard, I have to concentrate and tune into their frequency. And if I can do that, then I'm in.

And it's a magical mysterious place to be. It can be empowering, joyful. It can be volatile. It can be very emotional. It depends on my subject and their state of mind.

Now, if I'm sitting above them and they walk in, it's kind of like going to a dentist. And I doubt that very many people enjoy that process of you leaning back in the chair and, and the dentist or the doctor is peering over you. That's what I see on chat shows.

For me, a place of humility is to sit at their feet. It's not a trick. It's a genuine respect for humanity and body language. So, I invite them to sit on this apple box that I've been told more world leaders have sat on that chair than any chair in history, which is quite a bizarre thing.

Robin Pomeroy: Where did it come from, the box?

Platon: It's just a simple apple box that all film studios, photographers have in their studio. I was looking round for a chair that was the perfect height for me when I hold the camera and it wasn't too low, wasn't too high, and I like the fact that it strips away all evidence of power.

And everyone sits on this box, whether they are one of the most powerful people in the world or someone who's been robbed of all power. It's a sort of democratic idea of levelling out, power and treating everyone the same with equal respect, curiosity, and dignity.

Robin Pomeroy: I see that. I wonder if also, though, because we've just started this interview, we had a little very brief chat before. I'm sure you've done thousands of interviews, but all I'm trying to do is make the interviewee feel at ease. I don't think that's what you're doing, is it, with that? There's some points there where, are you deliberately sometimes bringing them out of their comfort zone by being that close and even on the on the Netflix documentary, you say sometimes I shout at them. And it wasn't a nasty shout. It was like, hey, it was a nice, uplifting kind of, yeah, we've got something here. But is it, are you trying to. It's not putting them at ease, is it? Or am I getting it wrong?

Platon: It's making them feel empowered in the space. I don't think I've ever shouted at anyone in a negative way that would make them close. I mean, that's the last thing I want. I want them to feel comfortable, empowered, and I want them to feel that they are in a place where they can express themselves in an authentic way.

And here's the thing. It's not for me to judge. I, of course, I have my own value system, but, I am not there to judge. I am there to collaborate with my sitter and try and find a moment that's authentic, as authentic as I can possibly find. And my sitter is collaborating with me to get there. We're in it together, and sometimes it's a bit of a battle for both of us.

But then when the picture is done, it's for history to judge. And that's when I put it back into society. And I say, you guys have a debate about this. I'm not clever enough to know whether what this person did was right or wrong. That's for you all to decide.

But what's interesting, I've found over many years of experience, is that when I get it right the picture lasts forever. It's a timeless moment. It's only 1/500 of a second. And in today's fast moving, this is a way to pause, to pause reality. Just pause it. We're all striving to do that. Photography actually does that.

So that's the first thing to say. But, when I get it really right. Everybody sees the story in the picture from all sides.

When I photographed Putin, I was told that he liked the picture and his admirers like the picture because it shows him as tough nationalist that he is. Now his opponents, members of the human rights community, also like the picture because it gave them a banner to hold up to the world, to show everything that they believe is wrong with power and authority in Russia. So, in fact, in fact, it's been used in thousands of demonstrations against Putin. People have painted, photoshopped rouge onto his cheeks, the LGBTQ community or horns onto him, and so much so that his administration, not that long ago, issued a warning that anyone caught circulating my picture of him online in connection with human rights will go to jail. And now those pictures have been deemed sensitive political material. So it's the same picture. It means different things to different people.

Robin Pomeroy: I was so curious, knowing the kind of people you had photographed, some of these powerful men. And you're there trying to make this human connection with them. And I'm wondering, do you ever feel - you don't have to name any names here - but do you ever feel there is no humanity there? Or does everyone, even the worst person, and I'm not saying, I'm not naming any names, even the worst person in the world, all the people you photograph, there's always some humanity. Maybe it's not a great form of humanity, but is that what you're able to connect to?

Platon: Well, what is humanity? You know, we think that humanity means it's a good person if you have humanity. To be human is to have an angel on one side and a demon on the other. That's what it is to be human. It's a scale of morality. That's a sliding scale.

I once asked Edward Snowden when I was in this crazy situation in a hotel in Moscow, and. And I said to him, I'd like to ask you about moral compass. How do you know that what you did was right? Some of my friends think you're a hero. Some of my other friends think you're a villain. And he said something very interesting. He said the line between right and wrong is not always bright. And all of us, at some point in our lives, will cross over that line. All of us. But what makes an honourable person is when you recognise that you've crossed over and you do everything in your power to bring yourself and the people around you back to the right side of history.

Now I have seen the human condition play out again and again in front of my camera in a square little format through my lens, and I've seen them all sit on the box. To be human is to struggle between right and wrong. And if someone takes a hard turn in the what we might think is the wrong direction. That doesn't mean they're not human. I've seen a lot of people who hold immense power in their hands, and they still have the capacity to do terrible harm and to be very charming at the same time. I find that really chilling that they can do that. And that's the most dangerous thing.

So to paint people as a two dimensional cartoon, which the media almost always does, this person's good, this person's bad. And when we discover something distasteful, suddenly we're all confused as to what to do with that iconic person that we all celebrated last week.

Robin Pomeroy: The film that you just showed here to colleagues of mine at the World Economic Forum. It's called Portrait of a Stranger. This is a film where you're interviewing and photographing refugees, and these words come up like friend or stranger. And then power comes up a lot. And it seems to go absolute to the heart of what you do.

Because you photographed the most powerful people in the world. But you've also spent the last 15 years going out and photographing the absolute opposite of powerful and rich and successful. You're going out and photographing people who are desperately oppressed or poor or heartbroken. How different is it photographing one end of the spectrum from the other?

Platon: I mean, every single picture is different. I don't think there are any similarities with people who have immense power and those who don't.

I photograph many people who have nothing, who share their values with me. They feel incredibly empowered sitting on that box and have someone listen to their story. For many of them, they they have nothing. All they have is their story.

And considering the security risks they make to share that story with me. That's an incredible trust that they place on my shoulders. And it's it's my duty to make sure that I, I'm responsible with that trust, and I do the right thing with it. And I see the story land in a respectful, appropriate way that would make them proud.

I've also seen many very powerful people who have become a brand, a global brand. And we all know a whole list of people who have done that. Famous people, and sometimes they appear to be trapped in a prison of their own making, because in the end, we're all - we talked about the word human - we're all human. We all struggle. We all have days when we feel lonely or we lose our confidence. We all have fundamental things we're scared of. We all have days where we don't really want to get out of bed and face the music that day. But if you have a brand of success, strength, invincibility, perfection, gradually you start to separate from that brand because you can't live up to it and you start to live a lie. And that is like living in a jail.

So, conversely, some of the most powerful people are the most scared. Some of the the powerless feel freedom talking to me, and empowerment. And I get to, again, that's sort of something that you probably wouldn't expect.

What what are the risks to be authentic and to be human?

I'd say a homeless person - I once photographed a man called the Caretaker on the streets of Philly. He's a drug addict. He's been a heroin addict for 20 years. He's homeless. And I found him on the streets. I was making a movie about living below the poverty line in America. And I said to him, why do they call you the Caretaker? And he said, because I spend my day in the neighbourhood picking up needles that other addicts have discarded because I don't want the kids coming home from school picking up dangerous needles and playing with them.

And I said to him, how is it the man who has nothing - you have nothing yourself - you're even a heroin addict too. You have huge health problems, surviving a winter in on the streets of Philly, I mean, it's just a miracle as far as I'm concerned. I said, how is it that you dedicate what little time you have in the day for yourself, you dedicate it to picking up needles of kids that you don't even know. He said, because the neighbourhood is all I've got. And that makes me feel alive.

So all the drug dealers and all the gangsters in the neighbourhood leave this man alone. Even the cops leave this man alone. And they call him the Caretaker. Because they know that he's gently walking around all day long, picking up needles that he finds and making sure kids don't get hurt with them.

Robin Pomeroy: Do you stay in touch with some of the people you've photographed?

Platon: I was asked this not that long ago.

For me, the most important thing is the moment together. I have seen so many hangers-on over the years in an entourage, who are all feeding off the fame and power of the person in the middle of the scrum. And it always made me feel nauseous, and I never wanted to be one of those.

I was always lucky. I had a healthy disregard for power.

Martin Luther King once said, beware of the illusion of supremacy. And even when I first heard that, when I was really young, that made sense to me - that it is an illusion.

So, all I care about is the magic of the collaboration at that moment. I live for it. And and I often will say to my subjects, this moment matters. Right now, there's probably no one on the planet who is as interested in you as I am. So let's work together. We. I can't do it alone. I need you, I need your trust. And I promise I'll earn your trust and be responsible with it. But let's make something together that matters. This is an important moment in your life, and I am very honoured to try to document that moment.

And it changes the dynamic in the room. It stops it being about today's press opportunity, or selling a film or selling a book or, you know, promoting a new product for a company or even for a person who has no power at all in the human rights community, it's just, another journalist, you know, shooting you from across the street, trying to get your, your great little, catch phrase or your great little image that's quite shocking. And and that's a nice little headline.

I'm not that. There's nothing objective about my work. It's completely subjective. It's collaborating with my sitters. And we make that moment together, and then we send it out to the public, and it's up for the public to decide. And it depends on my subject's legacy.

I photographed Harvey Weinstein and his brother as well, quite a few times, and I remember when I took that picture it represented a kind of bad-boy Hollywood swagger when he was top dog and had immense power. Now that same picture means something completely different. It's the same picture, but now it represents an absolute monster who abused his power and authority in the media.

So I think these images, if we get it right, it's timeless. Their legacy will change. History will change the facts that we know change. But then you see a new side of that picture that you weren't seeing before.

Robin Pomeroy: Wow. So effectively looking at that picture with a ten year gap or whatever, it's kind of a different picture to the person seeing it, but it's not a different picture. It's, it's that 500th of a second.

Platon: Same 500th of a second. And I see this again and again with my subjects. But I have no power. I have no, company backing me. No corporation. I have no government backing me. I'm just a person with a camera. And, sometimes able to tell a good story.

Robin Pomeroy: How did it all begin, then? Because you were born in Greece. Platon's your real name. How common a name is that in Greece?

Platon: It's quite uncommon.

Robin Pomeroy: Okay.

Platon: I once asked my dad, why did you call me Platon? Because it's the ancient Greek way of saying Plato. My dad had a great explanation. My dad was Greek. He said in ancient Greece, all the philosophers were wrestlers. They used to stay very fit and strong. They believed a healthy mind, healthy body. And I said to him, yeah but look at me. I'm a diminutive figure. I'm short. I'm not a strong person. I'm certainly don't have the frame of a wrestler. And he said, oh, you need to think again. He said, a successful wrestler never uses their own strength. They use the strength of their opponent against them.

And I thought, well, that's interesting. So I don't use any strength against anyone. I'm not fond of the word against. But I have learned to focus entirely on my subject and not on me.

And normally when we go into a meeting where we're kind of distracted by our own appearance, our own behaviour, what message are we projecting. For me, it's the opposite. It's reading the room, being really observant, seeing everything, feeling everything. And it begins with a handshake when my subject matter walks in the room.

I mean, if it's a president, I mean, everyone at the World Economic Forum sees this often, so you all know what I mean. But to anyone who's listening, there's a giant entourage comes in. There's assistants with their with their phones and their devices, constantly distracted. There's probably someone tweaking the the shirt and making sure there's no dandruff on the shoulders. And it's a whole machine. And then in the middle of that scrum is this rather frightened, petrified person who's in the middle of this insanity, this circus, who feels, that they in a minute are going to have to perform, and they hope they're not going to let themselves and their team and their their responsibilities down.

This is the psychology.

So, within that, I tune into a frequency and I find something magical going on. And I've had times where I'm working and people are literally tugging my elbow to stop, like, security guards. And I'm so locked into the moment that, you know, just shrug them off and say, no, we are not done yet. I'll tell you, and we're done. And my subjects feel that commitment and they're in there with me.

Robin Pomeroy: So the young Platon comes to England aged eight.

Platon: Yes.

Robin Pomeroy: When did you get into photography?

Platon: I used to, I was brought up in a Greek village, and my dad was an architect and artist. My mum's an art historian. We had pictures all over the house. We weren't rich, but we had pictures. Very sophisticated mum and dad. Very cultural. So I grew up looking at pictures.

And if you go to church, I'm not a religious person myself, but I respect religion immensely. And, you know, I've been, in my village there's so many churches everywhere. You know, hundreds of years ago, the church held community together. And in every church there are icons, you know, a picture of a saint. And there's often a halo around them.

So I grew up copying my dad, drawing, I would sit in the village square and draw the old ladies, the old men. Powers of observation went up. I would be familiar with icons in the churches, with art history all over my house. You know, posters of Picasso, Paul Klee, Matisse. My dad always had books on Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright. So I started to understand graphic structure, architecture, not just the forms in a building, but architecture of a person. How your body moves, how it's structured. Human scale became a language at home. How does that work? How does it relate to the environment?

And, eventually I fell in love with photography when we went to England, and I started taking pictures as a student and all that came into play. I picked up a camera and I realised something magical is happening because I'm a little nervous, my subject's a little nervous, and there's this crazy energy between us.

You put the camera down and the energy disappears. You pick the camera up again, it's like, oh my god, we're going in again.

That's interesting to me. Why is that? And now, even though everyone is a photographer, it's still as powerful.

Robin Pomeroy: You think so?

Platon: I think so. Without a doubt. Without a doubt. Especially for what I do. And. And now, with the advent of AI, we forget what the A stands for. Artificial. And people kept saying to me, oh well, maybe it's going, your job is going to become redundant. Absolutely not. It's added extraordinary value to what I dedicated my life to, which is an authentic moment, a real human moment, the human connection, the humanness in technology. It cannot be replaced.

Artificial intelligence is a tool to empower us, to help us move further. But it must never replace the human condition. And I know this is a very big, fiery debate right now, and many people will say, well, it won't be long before it does it. But it it's not human. It's artificial. And I'm a champion of the real, authentic moment.

Robin Pomeroy: I spoke to Nile Rodgers about that in Davos. Because you can now make music - just type in a sentence and it will make you a disco song or whatever. And I said, does that worry you at all? He said, very much like you, he said, there'll be tools that will be useful for certain things to help you, but to still deliver that thing. And then he said, by the way, when you come and see Chic play, we're all playing live. So that's just let me make that point very clear. A lot of people don't believe it.

Platon: And the audience feel that. That's the magic, that it's alive and that it's not a recording, that it's not constructed. This is something that's based on sharing a human moment.

Nile actually said to me something beautiful about lifting the souls of a million people. To really lift someone's soul, that has to be done with human generosity, human kindness, human compassion, human curiosity about each other, a desire to to reach out and connect and build together.

So, I believe in the human condition. I've dedicated my life to it. And, I've had a blessed life because of that dedication, an absolute blessed life, and some of the most amazing moments I've had, in, you know, in really difficult circumstances. But the human connection I've had the privilege to experience with my subject. It makes you feel 200% alive.

Robin Pomeroy: Did you always know that that was at the heart of what you were doing in photography? Or was there a moment when it just clicked that - now I understand why I'm doing this? Do you think you always, as that boy from Greece always had that, I want to connect with other people, I want this authentic human feeling?

Platon: Everyone has a gift. Everyone's good at something. And I'm lucky I found something. I'm notoriously bad at so many other things. I have never sent an email in my life.

Robin Pomeroy: Is that true?

Platon: Never sent. Apparently Putin has also. He doesn't do email. I found that out the other day. But, seriously, there are so many ordinary things that I just don't do.

Robin Pomeroy: Christopher Nolan, the movie director.

Platon: He's the same?

Robin Pomeroy: Yes. He doesn't have a mobile phone, and he never sends emails.

Platon: What does that do? It allows me to focus entirely on what I really care about. Which is the way you move, the signs you're sending to me, reading you like a book.

And I don't mean that in a judgemental way. It means genuine curiosity about how you're feeling and why. Perhaps the thing that I just said stimulates a little bit of vulnerability or stimulates some a sense of freedom and empowerment and joy. And, I have, that's my landscape. That's what I have to navigate.

Robin Pomeroy: I'm going ask you a few questions here, which, my colleague Linda Lacina, who hosts Meet the Leader, she has some set questions for leaders. And these are the cultural versions of her questions. So: What is a piece of advice you're grateful for?

Platon: I had the great privilege to work with Muhammad Ali. It's one of the most important shoots in my life. For many reasons, he was a hero of mine. But, he was very ill when I took that picture. And in fact, I think it's certainly one of the last shoots he ever did, if not the last portrait session before he passed away.

I remember feeling very moved and I said to him, Muhammad, you are the greatest. Teach me to be great. How can my generation be as great as your generation had to be during the civil rights era in America.

Now, he couldn't speak very well because of Parkinson's disease, so I had to get really close to him. And he whispered something in my ear and he said, I have a confession to make. What is it I said? He said I wasn't as great as I said I was. Holy shit, I said. That's the biggest confession I ever heard in my life, man. The whole world knows you as Ali the greatest.

And then he said, you misunderstand me. He said, I'll tell you what was great. It wasn't me. It was that people saw themselves in my struggle, that people saw themselves in my story. And then he turned it to me. And now I've got a great honour to share it with you and all your listeners and say this: If we can get people to see themselves in the stories that we put forward, then we achieve greatness. But that greatness is never us personally. That's something much bigger called bridge building.

A light bulb went off in my brain. Because with a human story, we can build bridges. Right now we are so obsessed with research and data that helps us measure everything. But numbers mean nothing without a human story. Nothing.

You can give people all the evidence they need and say this is why we need to move forward with this particular initiative and they won't do it. But if you put a human story that they see themselves in, that they recognise that little girl could be their little girl, that old man could be their father or their granddad. Then it changes, because now they have an emotional stake in the story. So that's why I care deeply when it comes to human rights, that we humanise the data.

Robin Pomeroy: And that's the change you're hoping, or the impact you're hoping, to have, would you say, with the film we mentioned, with your book? What were those 15 years of remarkable people you met who are in terrible circumstances? Is to humanise them, is to show you that could be your brother, that could be you.

Platon: Yes. And it's about changing the narrative. This book I've just, released, it's called The Defenders, and it's a celebration of human rights activists around the world from different regions, Russia, DRC, Burma, USA, dealing with immigration, even the Egyptian revolution and the Arab Spring. And people say to me, why do you call it The Defenders? I call it The Defenders because it's like a superhero title. It's like a superhero title.

Now, these people who are defenders of human rights, they are not superheroes. They don't have magical powers. They are ordinary people. But they do extraordinary things. And don't think for a moment they're not scared or vulnerable. They know the risks. They live with the risks. Many of their family and friends have lost their lives. That's the biggest risk of all.

But they do it anyway because they know it's the right thing to do.

Now that's a new set of cultural heroes. And instead of showing people just as victims, they may well have been victimised and they may well have suffered and been oppressed. But what's really interesting to me is their courage mixed with compassion.

And many of them have shown me such great leadership that I have not seen in any of our political leaders. Now that's changing the narrative.

And I said to myself, well, why should we just present all these incredible people's stories to stimulate pity and guilt? Maybe we should stimulate inspiration and draw us to a story that we want to know, rather than a story we should know.

And of course. It worked. It was validated. The books practically sold out in ten days. It even went to number one online for celebrity books - because there's no celebrities in this book. But it proves my point. Show people as a hero. They'll be treated as a hero.

Robin Pomeroy: I'm asking another three quickfire questions. Is there something you do now, in your work or in your life, that would not have occurred to you when you were that boy in Greece.

Platon: It took me a lifetime to deal with judgement. And to get the balance right with judgement and curiosity.

Robin Pomeroy: You making judgement about others or others making judgement about you?

Platon: No, I mean, I had enough of, I've certainly had my fill of people judging me, but that's not what's important in my work. What's important in my work is how can I really capture someone's character on film. And the more judgemental you are, the less capacity you have to get to a true moment.

Judgement just chips away at your capacity to see and understand and learn. So, curiosity has to rule.

Now, it took me a long time to break that down, and when I was younger, I couldn't help but be judgemental. I would photograph a politician who I fundamentally disagree with. It never showed in my work particularly, but even within myself, I knew, I don't like you.

Robin Pomeroy: It's interesting because getting rid of that almost could be seen as a weakness in yourself, right? It's like, well, I have these political views, I hate these people for whatever reason. If I'm softening that slightly to say, okay, well, let's not be judgemental, I think that's one of the, must be a reason that it's so hard to overcome.

Platon: And that's the risk we all we feel better if we're making judgements. But my job is to learn. To learn first. Judge later, learn first. And you can't learn if you're making judgements.

Your judgements are basically part of your brain saying, I already know this, so I don't need to learn.

And if we want to drive change, we have to know about the terrain we're moving in. And that means keep your eyes open, all your senses open. Listen and try to be observant. Catch why this is going. Try and figure out this path. Why is this person going in this direction?

There is, there's warmth to their character. What on Earth is going on here. I find that really interesting. Let's not get confused with promotion. Just because I photograph someone does not mean I'm promoting them. On the contrary, it's their, as I said before, it's their legacy that will drive us to judge. My picture if I get it right is just a true moment of that person.

And I've gone through this many, many a time. I mean, for instance, when I photographed Gaddafi. That was an insane moment in history. I photographed him at the the UNGA, the General Assembly, where all world leaders come to fluff feathers and make speeches in front of each other. And it was one of those rare times that he attended.

I set up my small photo studio. I was photographing many world leaders there at that time, and I had a set-up just outside the green room where all heads of state and government go in to read their speech, prepare, get, get themselves nicely fixed up, and then they walk on stage and make the speeches in front of the green marble wall that's very famous.

So the White House administration was in the green room. Obama was making his first address as president. So at that time, he was seen as a sort of political messiah. We're in the middle of the crash. The world was, you know, really stressed. And, there was such hope riding on his shoulders. And I was outside the green room waiting to get another portrait of Obama. I'd worked with him during the campaign.

So I was waiting. Suddenly in this narrow area while we're surrounded by secret service agents from the white House, there this giant crowd swell marching towards me. It's the Libyan delegation. In the middle is Gaddafi marching in slow motion defiance surrounded by about 15 female bodyguards dressed head to foot in military clothing. It was like a scene from Star Wars.

Now, what you've got here is a protocol nightmare. Because you are not allowed to have two, you could say opposing governments, coming to face to face in a small, confined space without prior negotiation. The secret service guys start freaking out. Everyone is standing right just past the door. Rahm Emanuel, Hillary Clinton, Axelrod, the sniffer dogs, the whole American administration power system is in there. And just a couple of feet away, there's this new delegation.

Gaddafi comes right up to me and in slow motion, he whispers in this strange accent. He says, Mr. Platon, I have come for my first and only portrait on American soil, but I will do it now under the nose of the White House administration. I want them to watch.

So I pick up my camera. He sits on the apple box and his body is radiating defiance, and I take a picture that captures his defiance.

Now, I'm not stupid. I know how unimportant I am. He's not posing for me. I would love to just get, at that moment, you could get sidetracked and think, wow, he knows my name. I'm in the middle of this crazy power scrum. But that's not where I'm at. He's not posing for me at all. He's posing to America. He's saying, I'm going to stay here a lot longer than you want me to, and I'm going to do my darndest to outsmart you all.

He actually did stay a lot longer. Eventually, I put down the camera. He walked away. I turn round and I see, you know, the CIA, the secret service wiping the sweat off their brows. Because any minute Obama is about to walk out the door and say, hey, guys, how did I do on stage? And then he's going to be confronted with a whole different circus.

But that picture means a lot to me. And I'll tell you why. And to show how I understand the significance of it.

Sometime later, on April the 20th, I remember, it's my birthday, and I was in my studio and I was doing some colour tests on that very picture in my studio, and we were just getting the colour balance just right in his eyes. And we did a giant print of it so I can put up on the wall with lights on it just to judge the print. We were doing an exhibition, and as the printer is producing this giant face of Gaddafi's slowly coming out of the machine, I got a phone call, and I was told that my friend Tim Hetherington, the famous war photographer, photojournalist, artist, beautiful person, had just been killed in Libya covering the carnage that, Gaddafi was creating. And I even heard that Gaddafi's forces had targeted him. And I look back at the printer and there was Gaddafi's face.

So I'm not naive. I'm not naive. I know what's going on here. But it's really important that we, we try to cure society's amnesia. And say this person was here. This person did terrible things. And we've got to make sure that doesn't happen again.

So I don't believe in hiding the pictures when things turn sour. I believe in keeping them up. And that's what I mean about being a cultural provocateur. It says a lot about us, and we need to correct ourselves. And many famous people fall from grace, and we quickly cancel them and wipe them off, as if we'd rather not see that picture anymore, and we'd rather not discuss their name, or we'd rather not see their movies or, we we must have a debate about our own values. And often if you look at the clues, the signs were always there in plain sight.

Robin Pomeroy: I'm going to ask you two more questions. You've been very generous with your time, and they're about inspiration. And the first one is, is there an artist you've learned from and what did you learn from them?

Platon: I have, I never look at photography anymore. My eyes are somewhere else.

My heroes are architects. Le Corbusier, more than anyone, teaches me about form and breaking rhythms, creating rhythms, and then breaking them.

Picasso teaches me about capturing someone's spirit. And you don't even doesn't even need to look like them. But you can capture their spirit. It's a mystical thing. If you look at a portrait by Picasso, you get a sense of what that person really is like.

I like artists who are courageous, who aren't afraid to keep moving forward into the unknown and risking their own platform or their own legacy. I find that really, really inspiring, to be brave.

So for me, I mean, there was a time when I started getting involved with human rights. You know, a lot of people in photography and dealing with celebrity and power warned me and said, be careful, you go into that niche, then you're going to, be ostracised by the people who you normally photograph, and then people won't want to sit for you if they see that you're a different type of photographer.

And, of course, that made me run even faster towards human rights, because that was a sign that I'm definitely on the right track.

But that hasn't happened. Their warnings haven't haven't come true.

I fundamentally believe that our duty is to have these debates about humanity and ask really important questions. What is fair? What is not fair? What is right? What is wrong? And what is a leader? I'll tell you a story about a leader.

I'm known now as the photographer of power, right? When I was in the DRC, I was working in a hospital called the Panzi Hospital, which is dedicated to helping women and children heal, who are survivors of sexual violence.

Many of us know that the Congo is the most dangerous place in the world to be a woman and a little girl. So I was working with the head doctor there, Doctor Mukwege, who I was very proud to see and win the Nobel Peace Prize. Doctor Mukwege. And he was my champion and my teacher. So we were working there and they gave me a little studio, to build my set up with my team, which was a therapy room before.

So one day this young girl comes in, she's 16 and she's got a baby on her lap, little boy's called José. And, her name is Esther. Now, imagine if you're a survivor of sexual violence, you walk into a small room surrounded by men who are assistants. That takes a lot of guts, man. A lot of courage.

So I remember her sitting, watching her sit there and she settled and I said, please tell me your story.

So I sat like I did with Colin Powell. I sat by her feet, and she told me what happened to her. And I'll tell you, tell it to you, she said, when I was 14, I was fetching water for my mum and dad in a rural area, and a gang of militia gangsters took me, abducted me and took me to their base camp in the forest. She said they tied me to a tree and about 40 men raped me for four days. Eventually the ropes came undone and she managed to escape. She walked for days and made it to a village. A man rescued her off the street, took her home. And then that man also raped her. Eventually he discarded her. And she walked for days towards the gates of this hospital, where she had heard that there are doctors and nurses healing people from this awful epidemic of rape as a weapon of warfare. The doctor operated on her and she had serious injuries, but he was successful in his treatment only to find that she was now pregnant from rape.

All of a sudden, that beautiful little baby boy that's on her lap, I understand a different story. He's born of rape.

I started crying. I had a daughter. I have a daughter. She's 17 now, she was younger then. And I felt embarrassed that I'm crying because Esther, as she's telling me this story, radiated a dignity and a strength and a kindness like I've never seen before. And I said to her, I'm ashamed. How is it that I'm crying? I'm a middle aged, privileged white man. And you're not crying. How is that?

And she said, the reason I don't cry in your picture when you take a picture of me is that I don't want to make you feel sad. She said, I don't want anyone to feel sad when they look at a picture of me. She said, my mummy and daddy told me that I was on this earth to bring joy to the world, and I will keep my promise.

That is a proper leader. She has nothing to share but her story and whatever joy she can muster, despite her challenges and her future is very uncertain, and she's got this beautiful little baby boy that's now completely dependent on her. And she's only 16 even at this point. But she still cares about you and me.

And we're strangers. I haven't seen that kind of leadership often in the corridors of power. And looking at the state of the world, without being accusatory, I hope that these stories inspire a new generation of leaders and they are ready, they are waiting to hold the torch, and they want to have a go and try and be transformative. And we look at young people now as, well, they're not important. They are important, and we have to nurture them and support them, especially young women. We have to make sure that they will become the great leaders that we so badly need.

Robin Pomeroy: Well, perfect way to end the first. Meet the Cultural Leader with a definition, which I wasn't expecting, of leadership. Platon, thanks so much for joining us.

Robin Pomeroy: Platon’s book is called “The Defenders, Heroes of the Global Fight for Human Rights”.

You can watch that whole interview on our YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@wef/podcasts - go to the Meet the Leader section in there.

And follow Meet the Leader, and Radio Davos, wherever you get podcasts. If you are interested in cultural leaders, check out our interview with the extraordinary ballerina Misty Copeland. And we’ll have more cultural leaders for you in the coming months.

This episode of Radio Davos was written and presented by me, Robin Pomeroy. Studio production was by Taz Kelleher.

We will be back next week, but for now thanks to you for listening and goodbye.