Platon quotes:

Perhaps the most important people that I should photograph are the people who don't have a voice.

It's very intimidating to be photographed, but if I kneel down and chat with you, so you're looking down at me, it makes you feel less threatened.

Mugabe had a very strange quality about him. He was dapper. He had the strangest skin - it looks very shiny, but it's not oily. It's stretched very finely over his flesh. His eyes have layers of cyan crystals in them. It was a quiet, dark moment when I took his picture.

I've always had a healthy disregard for authority - it allows me to do my job as a portrait photographer and not as someone who is playing the power game.

I do have my own personal convictions and values, and I live by those. But as an artist, as a portrait photographer, my job is to tell the truth and to capture someone's spirit on a certain day. And it's never the whole truth; it's the truth I experience in a very intense and intimate fashion.

I never think about a shoot before I do it. Because there's no formula for people. What I try to do is to strip everything away rather than go in with preconceived notions. If I do that, I might miss a gem or a jewel that the person is offering me.

My father is an architect, so I often think like a designer or an architect. I remember when I was admiring buildings, I would look up at them and see this perspective and this awesome power of the monument in front of me.