In the Julian Assange portrait sweepstakes, @MrToledano -- Philip Toledano -- comfortably in the lead.

Philip Toledano for the New Yorker. 

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_khatchadourian?cu...

The second picture doesn't do much for me, but the first one really knocks me out. 

There are two other formal portraits of Assange now out (that I've seen, there may well be others). Both are fine, but neither are closing fast on the top one above. 

Max Vadukul for the New York Times' T Magazine.  

http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/02/julian-assange-video/

 

Jillian Edelstein for Stern.

http://bit.ly/dG2UbZ

 

Assange's appearance in court today provided the daily snappers a chance to shoot something a bit more en pointe than usual, using the "heavily tinted windows of a police vehicle" as an off-camera filter. There's something surveillance-y about these three images that I like, though that may be because I just heard Jill Magid and Tevor Paglen speak at a event at the New School.

http://www.jillmagid.net/

http://www.paglen.com/

 

In the first photo, Carl Court renders the effect of the window-filter in a cooler machine-pink. In the two other photos, Peter Macdiarmid opts for full-on red-hotness. I think the Times picked the better of his two images seen here. Is Assange telling us the sting is on? 

 

 

 

Carl Court/AFP/Getty Images in the Guardian: "Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, pictured through the heavily tinted windows of a police vehicle as he arrives at Westminster magistrates court in London, on 14 December 2010." 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2010/dec/14/wikileaks-julian-assange-cour...

 

Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images in Stern

 http://www.stern.de/panorama/assange-vor-anhoerung-zum-haftbefehl-meine-entsc...

 

Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images in the New York Times. 

"The Wikileaks founder Julian Assange arrived at court inside a prison van with heavily tinted windows on Tuesday in London."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/15/world/europe/15assange.html