Stories of Photographing Monumental People (from Michelle Obama to Stephen Hawking) | Platon | TED

So here we are, together.

But we're in a technological trance.

Here we are together, but we're divided by tribalism.

Here we are together, but we're distracted by mass myths.

We've been separated by walls,

windows, computer screens, borders.

But we're united in our hearts.

Oh, we've argued and quarreled in the past.

But now we know we've got a common bond.

Humanity.

So why are we all here?

Maybe we're all looking for a key.

A key to unlock this political, economic, social, cultural paralysis.

Maybe the answer is in a little word: empathy.

Empathy is not just walking in someone's shoes or feeling someone's pain.

Empathy is the secret ingredient

for finding a human connection.

So I want you to open up your hearts and open up your minds,

because in times of confusion,

we must not lose our capacity to dare to be kind to each other.

Some years ago,

I had the great privilege to be invited to the White House

to do this.

Now this has got nothing to do with politics.

This is a cultural moment in American history.

This is Michelle Obama's first portrait as First Lady.

(Applause)

So on this day, I was nervous.

And when I'm nervous, I get socially clumsy.

Know what I mean?

(Laughter)

So I picked up my camera, focused on her eyelash,

and in my clumsiness I shouted out,

"Right, my love, I want your soul.

Give it to me."

(Laughter)

Silence in the room.

(Laughter)

I'm sure the hairdresser almost dropped the hairspray in shock.

And as I took this picture,

this devastating look came over her face.

The eyebrow raises as if to say,

"How dare you?

But I quite like it at the same time."

(Laughter)

So then I realize what I just said.

And I said, "My goodness me, I'm an Englishman.

And in England we invented being polite.

I think Canadians and Americans do it better now, but we invented it.

And here I am in the White House,

calling you ‘my love’ and demanding your soul.

Please forgive my atrocities."

She stands up, gives me a hug and whispers in my ear,

"Platon, when all is said and done, I'm just Michelle."

This is Pussy Riot.

You probably know them as the hardcore feminist punk rock group

who spoke truth to power against Putin's excessive nationalism.

And consequently,

they were sent to a Siberian prison for two years.

But what happens if we remove those colorful, aggressive masks?

You see something different.

This is Nadia and Masha

photographed after they were released from prison.

Look at their faces, you can see the vulnerability on their faces.

You can see that they've paid a heavy price

for their support of LGBTQ rights

and women's rights in Russia.

Now during their trial in the courtroom, before jail,

they were kept in a big cage as if they're wild animals.

Nadia, the woman with dark hair, the co-founder of Pussy Riot,

she was constantly scribbling handwritten notes on a scrappy piece of paper.

Eventually, the judge said to her,

"I want you to stand up and make your closing statement

before I sentence you."

I'm sure Nadia must have known she's about to go to jail.

Nevertheless, she stood up.

Nervously clutching her piece of paper,

took a deep breath and read out from her notes.

And what she said to the judge and to the world, I believe,

will go down as one of our generation's greatest speeches.

She said,

"I wouldn't give people labels.

There are no winners or losers here,

injured parties or accused.

We just need to make contact,

to establish a dialogue and a joint search for truth,

to seek wisdom together, to be philosophers together,

rather than stigmatizing and labeling people.

That is one of the worst things people could do."

I believe Nadia thinks one of the worst things we could do

is to judge each other.

Maybe we need to be less judgmental

and more curious.

When you look at one of my pictures,

you might find yourself making judgments about that person.

So what happens if I strip away your capacity to make those judgments?

I take away 95 percent of the picture,

and I leave you with just five percent that you can't recognize.

But maybe it's the most important part.

The window to someone's character.

The eye.

Whose eye is this?

Always watching us.

Is it someone you love?

Is it someone you hate?

It belongs to this man.

This man.

At this moment,

I would like to pay tribute to all the courageous, brave,

resilient heroes

who fight against oppression,

who fight for human rights,

dignity, freedom and justice around the world.

Let's give them a round of applause.

Come on.

(Applause)

So I was driven through the streets of Moscow,

past the gates of the Kremlin,

and we continued out of the streets of Moscow

into a dark, bleak, Gothic forest.

We arrived at one of the most sinister buildings I've ever seen in my life.

His private residence, his private dacha.

And it was surrounded by a two-story high security wall

with snipers all the way along the top.

As I get out of the limo,

I'm escorted into the building at gunpoint.

I'm led into a room.

I waited, and he comes in with a giant entourage.

And I said, "Mr. President,

before I capture this moment of history on film,

I've got a question I'd like to ask you."

I said, "I was brought up by my mom and dad

listening to the music of The Beatles.

I want to know if you ever listened to The Beatles.”

His two translators whisper in his ear.

There's some confusing looks amongst the entourage,

and then his mood drops.

And in Russian, he orders the two translators

and all his political advisers out of the room, immediately.

The bodyguards stay.

And then Putin turns to me

and in perfect English, he says,

“I love The Beatles.”

(Laughter)

I said, "I didn't know you spoke English."

He said, "I speak perfect English."

I said, "In that case, who's your favorite Beatle?"

He said, "Paul."

I said, "What's your favorite song?

Is it 'Back in the USSR?'"

(Laughter)

Yeah, he didn't like that very much.

And then he said, "No.

My favorite song is ‘Yesterday.’

Think about it."

And I thought about it.

And I realized I'm being sent a subliminal message

about the old days of power and authority of the Soviet Union

through a Paul McCartney song.

Now, that human connection I had with him allowed me in,

and I ended up about an inch and a half away from his nose as I took this picture.

I could feel his cold breath on my hand as I focused the lens,

and that's how I got the truth.

The truth is that this is the cold face of power and authority in Russia.

And then he performs power for me in his chair.

Now the LGBTQ community and the human rights community in Russia,

many of their members have adopted my pictures of Putin,

and they used them as a banner

to show everything that they believe is wrong with power in their country.

I've been told recently

that anyone in Russia who is caught circulating my pictures online

in connection with human rights violations

will be arrested

and they will go to jail immediately.

Whose eye is this?

Someone you love?

Someone you hate?

It belongs to a man who was prepared to go to jail for his beliefs.

The late, great Muhammad Ali.

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?"

He couldn't speak very well because of Parkinson's.

So I had to get close, and he whispered,

"I have a confession to make."

"What is it?" I said.

He said, "I wasn't as great as I said I was."

(Laughter)

"Holy shit," I said.

(Laughter)

"That's the biggest confession I ever heard in my life.

The whole world knows you as Ali, the greatest."

And then he said,

"I think you misunderstand me.

I'll tell you what was great," he said.

"It wasn't me.

It was the people, saw themselves in my struggle,

in my story."

And then he turned it to me,

And now I've got the great honor to turn it to you.

And he said,

"If you can get people to see themselves in the story that you put forward,

then you have a chance of achieving greatness.

But that greatness is never you personally.

That's something much bigger, called bridge building."

A light bulb went off in my brain, so I took this picture.

My last ever portrait of Muhammad Ali.

Not as a prizefighter or a champion,

but as a compassionate bridge builder,

thinking of the underdog.

Whose eye is this?

Someone you love, someone you hate?

A different type of underdog.

Belongs to this man.

So I said to him, "Donald,

"Let's be human with each other just for a few minutes.

We've all followed your career," I said.

"No one can doubt, it's an extraordinary career path you've had.

But there's always something about you.

There's always an air of tension and controversy

about things you say and do in public.

And I'm sure that's intentional on your part.

But it feels to me as if you're in the middle of an emotional storm.

Personally, I couldn't live with that anxiety all the time.

I want to know how you weather the storm."

He calmly looks at me and he says,

"I am the storm."

(Audience murmurs)

The eyes are always watching us.

But how do we use our eyes?

Do we look?

Or do we see?

When you look at this picture,

you might find yourself thinking about the politics of war.

But when you see the person in this picture,

you get to know Jessica.

Jessica holds a flag they draped over her husband's coffin,

who had recently been killed fighting in Iraq for America.

I took this picture in her home.

Now she has his wedding ring around her neck on a chain.

When you're killed in combat,

the US military sends your clothes and personal belongings

back to the family in a big box.

Jessica had recently received the box

but had not yet had the courage to open it.

There it lay, closed, at the base of her bed, in her bedroom.

I said to her, "Jessica, maybe you should wear one of his army T-shirts

as a tribute to him in the picture."

She said, "I would.

But all his T-shirts are in the box.

Maybe now," she said,

"it's time for me to face that emotion."

So we both walked into her bedroom.

We both knelt at the base of her bed,

and we undid a latch each of the box and lifted the lid.

And she burst into tears.

And I felt ashamed of myself.

For the first time in my life,

I had put a photograph above the well-being of a person.

As I apologized, she said,

"You don't understand why I'm crying.

I'm crying," she said,

“because I just realized they washed his clothes,

and I wanted to smell him again."

Did you feel that?

Did you feel that?

If you felt that ...

then something beautiful just happened.

We all came into this room defined by our differences.

Men, women, old, young, Black, white.

Dare I say, members of the Left.

Dare I say, members of the Right.

Different genders,

different religious groups, cultures.

But we all felt that together.

What we felt is compassion.

Compassion for someone you've never even met.

That's the power of human connection.

And that's why we will not go down

as the generation of connectivity that disconnected itself, no.

I think we're going to rise up.

I think we're going to rekindle the spirit of optimism.

It seems to me they underestimated the resilience of humanity.

Whose eye is this?

Someone you love?

Someone you hate?

It belongs to a man who was robbed of the power of human connection.

Professor Stephen Hawking.

Now, he was very ill when I took this picture.

In fact, his whole body had essentially shut down.

There was only one muscle he could still work,

and that was underneath his eye.

His team of scientists placed a sensor at the base of his glasses.

You can see it here.

And that sensor picks up movement of that muscle.

And with that muscle,

he moves a cursor over each letter of the alphabet

on his laptop screen.

He chooses a letter, builds a word,

constructs a paragraph,

and that's how he communicated those epic statements about space,

time and humanity to us.

At the end of the session, I said to him,

"Professor, what an honor it is for me to photograph you.

And I've seen how hard it is for you to even communicate.

But I'm going to ask for a big favor."

I said, "I want one word of wisdom from you.

One word from you,

it's going to be worth a million words from anyone else."

We all waited.

His nurse was a little concerned.

I had heard that that muscle was failing,

and most of the things he typed around this time

didn't mean anything.

Suddenly we heard, beep,

beep ... beep, beep, beep.

He was typing.

We all leaned in to the laptop screen to see where the cursor is going to go,

and he went all the way to the letter W.

And he starts the next letter,

beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.

All the way to the letter O.

And then the final letter.

Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.

All the way back to the letter W.

Someone on the team said, "W-O-W what does that stand for?

That's nonsense, it's a mistake."

And I said, "Hold on a minute.

That's not a mistake.

He just typed the word, ‘Wow.’

He just gave me a word my kids would use about the beauty and majesty of life.

And isn't it amazing how the man who faces so much adversity

still looks at the world through the eyes of wonder?"

His nurse said, "He's exhausted.

Let's give his eyes a rest.

Let's take off his sensor,

take off his glasses and replace them with his dark sunglasses."

And then I saw it.

A vision of a bad-ass rock star of hope.

And I took this picture.

This is my fitting tribute to a legend of our time,

a man who believed that connection equals compassion.

So I'm not going to leave you with an answer.

I'm going to leave you with a question.

Are we to be bystanders,

like moths dancing around somebody else’s flame?

Or are we to be upstanders,

and we light darkness ourselves with our own torch of compassion?

Because when there is light,

we see each other not as strangers,

not as opponents

but as creative partners.

And then together, we rebuild this troubled world.

Together, we reconnect.

Together, we earn the respect of history

and transform this chaos into a beautiful cosmos.

Thank you for listening to me.

(Applause)