Gifted with the ability to emotionally move people, Platon Antoniou, known only by his first name, helped President Barack Obama swing the 2008 election in his favor by influencing the campaign with a single photo that affected the entire nation.

Claimed to little talents at a young age, Platon was given a camera in college that changed his life; he could not go back but only push forward. Platon traveled to Fresno to share his burning passion of telling stories through portraits at the Saroyan Theater as a part in the San Joaquin Valley Town Hall Lecture Series, Nov. 14.

Platon has met a plethora of individuals, including heads of state, ambassadors, dignitaries, kings, celebrities and presidents. While working for Time Magazine, US Weekly and New York Times, he has been able to complete more than 100 portraits of the most influential and prominent people alive on the planet today.

With one picture Platon is able to communicate a story and take the audience through a roller coaster filled with laughter and tears; some photographs hold stories that everyone can enjoy and relate to. Many of the photos are published together in his 2011 book, Platon Power by Chronicle Books.

Platon shares an experience where he was given the opportunity to take a picture of former President Bill Clinton for Esquire Magazine. At the time, Platon was not the first choice as a photographer, but was hired for the photo shoot anyways. He was given strict instructions not to mess this up and provide a simple head shot, but low and behold the inevitable happens: a full body shot of the President was taken.

“I spent seven and a half minutes taking the dignified presidential head shot, but then I said to myself ‘Come on man this is the moment where you become Platon, this is the moment where your supposed to take the picture your meant to take,'” Platon said. “Two months after handing all the stuff into the magazine and I was waiting for the pictures to come back, and that night my wife and I decided to eat some takeout Chinese food and watch TV. That very night, Larry King held up one of my pictures and said ‘This is disgusting’ and invited Bob Woodward, who brought down {President Richard} Nixon, to come and analyze the picture.”

It was personal anecdotes like the Clinton story that captivated the audience with laughter. Platon believes that each person is created to be who they are and not someone else. The internal struggle to follow rules has been a struggle for him since he was a kid. Platon stressed to the audience to be content and satisfied with the abilities and gifts each person possesses and not to let anything get in the way of success.

“Success is no longer defined by how many zero’s one has in his account, but the measure of how one can say ‘how did I impact the world today for a greater cause?'” Platon said. “When times are rough don’t look at the obstacle, but instead look at the achievement of overcoming the obstacle.”

Antoniou told the audience to look at life as a challenge; fight back and don’t let down, but instead take is on like Al Pacino in Scarface. He advises to always remember that human suffering should remind you {audience} that we {everyone in the auditorium} are lucky, people sacrifice things in their life for what they believe in. At this point in the lecture, Platon communicates a story in his own life when he almost died because he needed to take a picture of a lady who fought for what she believed in.

“I wanted to know more about human sacrifice and courage, so I went to Burma,” Platon said. “Many may know that they have brutalizing their {Burma’s} people for a long time, and it’s a country with a bad human rights record. While in Burma, my goal was to take a picture of Aung San Suu Kyi, one of the worlds most prominent political prisoners. It was at that moment when I realized the true face of courage. I have never experienced this face of inner beauty, it was like taking Muhhamad Ali, Martin Luther King and Dalai Lama and mushing them together. She looked at me with the force of inner strength that I dream of one day obtaining.”

Platon also commented on the idea that the world still needs to develop more, in the sense that human rights, equality and other issues amongst those are still prevalent today. He shared that only four of the 100 or so dignitaries at the United Nations World meeting were women. Platon also shared a close-to-home story about a group of colored Americans who were terrorized to go to an all white school back in the 1950s: the Little Rock Nine. His ending comments were about how the world is changing, and we {audience and the world} no longer want to feel inadequate but, want to feel accepted in society; it is the Human Condition.

“We {people} say we live in an enlightened time, but clearly we have a long, long, long way to go to achieve this,” Platon said. “We are always shown pictures of perfection on every cover of every magazine, and it is a clever trick that is played on us. What it does is makes us feel inadequate, and then we start to loose self esteem and look else where for acceptance hoping to obtain that level of perfection. Times are changing and we want to see something different; we want to see truth; we want to see people who inspire us on the cover of magazines, not the ones who we will never become.”

Currently Platon is working on something called The Peoples’ Portfolio, which is an organization that will allow himself to take pictures of people who are changing the world for the better and write a story on the progress of their success. Platon believes that we {humans} are put on earth to help further humanity for the better; but most of all to make a difference in others changing the way they view the world as they know it.

For more features, read the Nov. 15 article, Mock trials highlight murder cases.