10/19/09
THIRD EYE
39.third eye
9:33 PM
Page 98
Photos by Spencer Platt/Getty Images
IMAGES WITHOUT Growing up in Westport, a community that stresses academics, I was always somewhat out of sync with my classmates at Staples High School. While many fellow students were planning careers in finance and law and competing for slots at competitive Ivy League universities, I was looking forward to leaving the confines of school and to getting on the road. Following a few years at college, I knew more than ever that I needed a life that would take me to the extremes‌ as far away as I could get from the world I had grown up in. The first time I came into contact with this new world was on a trip to Albania in the mid 1990`s as a young freelance photographer. I witnessed a society break down and felt the exhilaration of the unknown. This was an intoxicating experience for me, the first time that the reality and the stability I had known were pulled out from under me and I was forced to sink or swim. I swam, and the more I swam the more I became defined by this new and strange world of global conflict. I feel a responsibility to cover situations and places that others may not have access to or care to visit. In 2000, I began to work at Getty Images, where I have remained ever since and which has fostered my desire to travel. The job of a photojournalist is complex, and quickly becoming more so in theses days of media anarchy. But we are still responsible to show the world the underdog and the forgotten; to do our part in keeping a society compassionate and aware. Recently, I have been assisted in my work by the excellent health organization Medicins Sans Frontieres, (Doctors without Borders) who have helped get me into some of the more isolated regions I often seek out. I am not sure what my future holds, which is a wonderful and exhilarating thought! � Spencer Platt is a New York based staff photographer for Getty Images. His work has appeared frequently in such publications as Time, Newsweek, Stern, Paris Match and the Los Angeles Times, among others. As a member of the Getty Images news wire service, he frequently covers stories in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. Platt has won numerous awards, including both Photography of the Year (POY) and the NPPA Year in Pictures. Platt won the coveted World Press Photo of the Year award for an image taken in Beirut in 2006. Platt lives in Brooklyn, New York with his wife Erica Sashin, also of Westport.
9 8 I S S U E 3 9 . 2 00 9