Empathy is reflected in the photos of the world-famous photographer who shared that emotion during his keynote presentation at the CUNA Finance Council Conference in New York City.

Time, New York, and Wired are among the many magazines that have published images by the photographer, who goes by the single name Platon.

During his long career, he’s captured the lives of world leaders and celebrities at their most vulnerable moments.

Among the lessons learned from his celebrity encounters:

• Muhammad Ali. In what would be the final photography session of Ali’s life, the boxing great told Platon he was actually wasn’t greatest after all. “That’s the biggest confession I ever heard in my life,” Platon recalls. “But Ali added, ‘l’ll tell you what was great. It was the people who saw themselves in my story.’ If you can get others to see themselves in the stories that you put forward, it’s something much bigger: It’s called bridge building.”
• Mark Zuckerberg: The Facebook founder has a poster in his office that poses the question, “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?” Platon asks audience members to consider the question in the context of their lives. “It’s one of the most powerful questions we could ask ourselves. Would your life be different? Would your career path be different? Would your relationships be different?”
• George Clooney: Platon says Clooney laments that people have so much connectivity but seem to be trapped in their own echo chambers rather than taking part in shared experiences. Platon congratulated attendees for taking part in a shared experience such as this week’s conference where they could network and exchange ideas. “You all showed up to be present, to learn, to be challenged and that gives me a great amount of hope in our society,” he says.

Platon also shared photos of political figures, from nearly every corner of the world, and was careful not to take any political stance.

“I think it’s our moral obligation to debate our differences, but to do it with respect and not return to our own filter bubbles and echo chambers,” he says.

Platon says that starts with empathy.

He left the audience with a question: “Are we to be bystanders like moths dancing around someone else’s flame, or are we to be upstanders, where we light up the darkness ourselves with our own compassion? Perhaps then we’ll earn the respect of history.”

►Visit CUNA News for more conference coverage, and get live updates on Twitter via @CUNA_News, @cumagazine, and @CUNACouncils, and by using the #FinanceCouncil hashtag. Learn more about the CUNA Finance Council, a member-led professional society for credit union finance executives, at cunacouncils.org.