Platon

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.

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.

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.

I always wanted to be the underdog. For me, as a portrait photographer, it's the kiss of death to become well known. I did my best work when no one knew who I was. People weren't threatened by me because they didn't think I was a big deal.

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'm not a politician or a scholar or political historian. I'm just a photographer who's trying to capture a spirit. It's not an intellectual process; it's an intuitive process.

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.

Photography can be a volatile situation. It can be very potent.

I am not a photojournalist and certainly not used to the Jason Bourne type stuff that some photographers have to deal with.

I'm a portrait photographer that's used to shooting celebrities, and I usually need time and all kinds of lights and a studio to set up my shots.

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've been one of the image-makers who created this concept of perfection. I've done a thousand magazine covers where I'm celebrating Hollywood, glamorous people. Which is all good. It's all entertainment.

People are at their best when they can be natural. And that's the hardest thing as a photographer.

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