Portraits worth thousands of words

“A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he’s being photographed, and what he does with this knowledge is as much a part of the photograph as what he’s wearing or how he looks. He’s implicated in what’s happening, and he has a certain real power over the result.” – Richard Avedon

The New Yorker Magazine is running a photo series entitled, “Portraits of Power”, an interactive portfolio of portraits of 50 world leaders taken in September, when nearly all the world’s leaders were in New York at the annual United Nations General Assembly opening. If you’re as much a junkie for international politics as I am (which you probably are if you read this blog with any sort of regularity) I guarantee you’re going to click on one of these photos, listen to the photographer’s commentary, and then not stop until you’ve been through them all. The photographer, who goes by the name “Platon”, calls Rwanda President Paul Kagame “perhaps his favorite picture”. Personally, I thought Ban Ki-moon, Zambia President Rupiah Banda and Silvio Berlusconi were particularly interesting. Most compelling: without a doubt, Robert Mugabe. Or Qaddafi. Or Andry Rajoelina. Or Saakashvili. Look, just click here, ok?

I might also point out that in the print version of this, Medvedev and Victor Yushchenko each gets his own page and are positioned on opposing pages.