The Defenders: Heroes of the Global Fight for Human Rights quantity, Text by Platon, Ko Bo Kyi, Wael Ghonim, Tanya Lokshina, Alina Diaz, and Denis Mukwege

Paperback, 9.75 x 13.75 inches, 560 pages, including 4 double gatefolds, 75 color / 200 black and white illustrations, Full color poster included

The celebrated portraitist Platon has spent much of his career photographing the famous and powerful, but he has also traveled the world documenting human rights activists and their quests for justice. The Defenders presents five photo essays spanning 15 years of work on these struggles in Burma, Egypt, Russia, the United States, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In Burma, he took portraits of monks, sex workers, former child soldiers and the controversial political leader Aung San Suu Kyi. He was on the ground in Cairo for several weeks early in 2011, when Egyptians took to the streets and demanded the resignation of Hosni Mubarak. In Russia, he photographed and spoke with dissidents who have battled a slew of oppressive governments. Along the border between the USA and Mexico, he documented victims of inhumane immigration policies, and photographed U.S. presidents. Finally, the chapter on the Congo documents the continuing trauma of sexual violence as a weapon of war. The full-bleed images are accompanied by texts that contextualize the complex issues in each place and retell Platon’s own stories of shooting on location.

About the Authors

Platon is one of the world’s most renowned portrait photographers and has photographed more world leaders, including six American presidents, than anyone else in history. He has photographed over 30 covers for Time magazine, including Vladimir Putin for their 2008 Person of the Year cover, which was awarded first prize at the World Press Photo Contest. As staff photographer for the New Yorker, he won a Peabody Award and two National Magazine Awards. He has published four books with subjects ranging from the power of world leaders to the dignity of those who serve in the US military. In 2013, Platon founded The People’s Portfolio, a non-profit foundation dedicated to celebrating emerging global leaders in human and civil rights. Platon serves on the board for Arts and Culture at the World Economic Forum.

Ko Bo Kyi is a former student activist, political prisoner, and founder of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. He spent over seven years behind bars for his participation in the underground democracy movement in Burma. For his outstanding contributions to freedom and human rights, he was bestowed the Swiss Foundation for Freedom and Human Rights’s 2011 Award, Human Rights Watch’s 2009 Alison Des Forges Award for Extraordinary Activism, and the 2008 Human Rights Defender Award from Human Rights Watch.

Wael Ghonim is a computer engineer, an Internet activist, and a social entrepreneur. Ghonim became a symbolic leader of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution after he launched the Facebook page “We Are All Khaled Saeed,” which became one of the largest platforms for Egyptian dissidents. In 2011, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and was named one of TIME Magazine’s 100's most influential people. Ghonim is a senior fellow at Ash Center for Democratic Governance at Harvard University.

Tanya Lokshina is the Russia program director and a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. She is an expert on egregious abuses in Russia’s turbulent North Caucasus region and co-authored a report on violations of international humanitarian law during the 2008 armed conflict in Georgia. Lokshina is a recipient of the 2006 Andrei Sakharov Award, “Journalism as an Act of Conscience.”

Alina Diaz is a founding member of Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, the first organization in the U.S. to promote the rights of women farmworkers. Drawing on her own experience of abuse and poverty as an unauthorized immigrant from Colombia, Diaz travels to immigrant communities, raising awareness among women about their right report harassment, rape, and domestic violence and connect them to social and legal services. She works at the national level to educate policy makers and the public about the dangers women farmworkers face.

Dr. Denis Mukwege is a world-renowned gynecological surgeon and the founder and medical director of Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Since he opened the hospital in 1999 as a clinic for gynecological and obstetric care, he and his staff have cared for more than 50,000 survivors of sexual violence amid the DRC’s ongoing civil unrest. Dr. Mukwege was the recipient of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize for his advocacy against sexual violence as a weapon of war and for his outstanding services to survivors of rape.