Visionary
Platon, who photographed the former president for the cover, discusses portraiture and creating the perfect image.
texasmonthly.com: How much time did you get to spend with President Bush?
Platon: We were promised three minutes, and we ended up getting about fifteen. He was fantastic. I always try to generate a really fun and interesting sitting for people, so that they're occupied, so that they're distracted from the awkwardness of doing a shoot. It is always a little bit awkward; they don't know me and they have this camera pointed in their face. Before any sitting, the person I'm shooting always says to an assistant, "Let's just make sure this is cut as short as possible." But once they get in, we start having a laugh and generate a good positive atmosphere, they're great and it just rolls and rolls. I was lucky with Mr. Bush, and he was a very charming guy actually.
texasmonthly.com: Were you surprised by his personality?
Platon: I was. I was expecting the whole thing to be much more conservative. I think I'm lucky in that I'm English. I can get away with murder sometimes, but I do it with a sense of warmth, rather than sarcasm. I thought he was quite stylish. He was wearing a beautiful suit, which he told me was made in Savile Row, in London, the traditional area in London for everyone to get their suits handmade. And I kind of recognized the cut, it's famous in English culture, and I was surprised to see a former American president wearing a Savile Row suit. I spent part of the sitting teaching him this Cockney rhyming slang, which is sort of a street talk in working-class London going back hundreds of years that the British still use. I said, "If you ever use any of these phrases when you meet dignitaries from England, they will love you straight away." The first thing I taught him was the slang for "suit," which is "whistle and flute." He loved that, and when I asked him to sign my book at the end of the sitting, he wrote this lovely little message to me: "I'm very touched that you liked the whistle and flute. Yours truly, George Bush." It was great!
I had the picture on the cover in my head for about three months, but I didn't know where to place it. I was photographing Giuliani [for Esquire], and after the shoot, I kicked myself when this idea popped in my head—how wonderful it would be to have someone doing the peace sign. See, in England, that sign is V for victory, and originally comes from Churchill, because when Britain won—when Britain and America won the war—he was famous for having a cigar in one hand and doing the V for victory in the other hand. It was perfect when Texas Monthly asked me to take George Bush's picture, better than anything else I could have planned. I didn't think he'd do it, so I saved it for the last frame. I covered myself, got everything I felt I needed to get, and when the atmosphere was at its most fun, I asked him about Winston Churchill, kind of guiding him into this trap. I didn't tell anybody about it because I didn't want to jinx it, but I said, "Do you like Winston Churchill, Mr. President?" And he said, "I love Winston Churchill." So I said, "Give me the victory V that he was famous for." And without really thinking, he just did it. And I got two frames, one with him blinking, and the other one, the last frame, is the one that Texas Monthly is using. The very last frame of the whole shoot. When you're doing a portrait of someone, you can't really preconceive these things too much because everyone has a different personality. I had this idea in my head, but I couldn't guarantee it would work until I met him and felt his personality. But I found he was a little bit cheeky, and he does have a sense of humor.
This turned out to be quite a serious idea as well, because to me it's a clash of two cultures' perspectives. He could be saying "victory," because his son took over, and his family is still in power, and there was this feeling that finally they got their way with Saddam Hussein. The other way to look at it is as a peace sign, which is more the American approach—interesting because parts of Europe might look at what [George W.] Bush was doing as far from being a peace-driven policy. Then again, Bush himself might say this is all about world peace, about making this a safer world. So it can be read a lot of ways, depending on what your politics are, and that's why I like it.
texasmonthly.com: That pose has a funny place with presidents, because it's something Americans have become so used to seeing from our presidents in news footage.
Platon: That's right. It's a weird thing, because if you have politicians outside of a studio scenario, they're often at a podium, or you'll get them reaching in the air or very animated. But as soon as you put people in a clinical environment, in a studio with one light and a white background, they tend to become very conservative. It doesn't matter who they are. I try to regenerate the atmosphere and vitality of the real world. And you can't always do it. Sometimes you're given so many restrictions with time, or the person you're photographing isn't interested at all, or he's had a really bad day—there are so many variables. You can never assume it's going to be easy. I always have to go in expecting that this is a question of survival for me, that everything is riding on this picture.
texasmonthly.com: Even with the experience you've gained and the reputation you've built for yourself, you still go into shoots with that fear?
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