![]() I didn’t wish to read too much into the obvious difference in their format (the former was shot in color the latter in black and white) and yet I thought I detected a particular glint in Ahmadinejad’s eyes. It is not a mystery why Ahmadinejad and Obama occupy the first spread (in the magazine). In these spontaneous moments, has Platon managed to capture the true essence of his subjects? That often depends on the context in which the images have been displayed and the eye of the beholder. Absent were the endless preparation, preening and pretense of a more formal studio environment. 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.įor the few minutes available in this chaotic setting to prepare and capture an image, it was the photographer who held the true power. 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. The accompanying blurb provides entertaining background: Nowhere is his work with the latter group more effectively displayed than in the recent photographic essay “Portraits of Power,” which appeared in the December 7th issue of The New Yorker. Since the early 1990s, British photographer Platon has enjoyed unparalleled access to personalities and potentates. Learn more about the German artist at his webpage.Platon- Muammar Qaddafi, 2009, photograph (courtesy The New Yorker). Seen in this way, Stephan Widera is using his absurd visual worlds to not only actively engage in media and social critique, but also valid art critique – and does so with a charming twinkle in his eye.Įxcerpt from a text of Dr. Stephan Widera's pictures expose the mechanisms of propaganda and slogans as society constituting reality. What is striking about Stephan Widera's worlds is that there are no individualists, which is surely an accurate commentary on our current society. There is a nod to Vladimir Tatlin and Oskar Schlemmer. He allows constructivism to perform a fleet-footed, virtuoso dance. He counters the spirit of pop art with his highly charged social references. Stephan Widera german artistIt is with the same inscrutably humorous consideration that Stephan Widera devotes himself to art history. However, what initially evokes an amused grin from the beholder soon takes on a life of its own with completely new potential relationships, sometimes acerbic, sometimes cheerful, but always with ironic clarity concealed behind it all. He appears to put together his works randomly with the seeming innocence of a child. ![]() Stephan Widera's pictures are both colourful and playful. He jauntily blends the historic with the modern, the serious with the banal, and incorporates slogans and headlines in his surreal visual worlds.įor this kaleidoscope of possibilities, Stephan Widera draws on material from the world of popular images and media, the origins of which always remain identifiable. ![]() Whether advertising, consumerism and merchandise the pharma industry porn and eroticism fashions and the so-called zeitgeist – nothing escapes Stephan Widera's eye. Stephan Widera's collages piece the world together in a new way, leaving nothing out that constitutes social reality.
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