Both before and after the war Platnick worked as a news photographer for PM, which had first appeared carrying headlines announcing the Nazi’s occupation of Paris, and was staunchly pro-labour. He reported for them on the 1941 Gimbel department store workers’ strike in which the protesters carried distinctive placards in the form of comic-strip frames, made up by the display department, and also that year in an amusing series, he photographed Greenwich Village poets, including Diana Barrett Moulton, Maxwell Bodenheim and Joe Gould, in eccentric poses in front of their verses scrawled on the walls of the Village Arts Center at 1 Charles St.PM, July 28, 1941, pp. 18–19 He won the Grand Prize in the Spot News section of the New York Press Photographers’ Association 7th Annual Exhibition for What Makes Sammy Jump? showing news photographers leaping from the path of an enraged bull at the annual Madison Square Gardens Rodeo.Minicam Photography – Volume 12 – Page 48 Still as a photographer for PM in 1946 he submitted Portrait of a Cop Killer to the Portraits and Personalities section of the New York Press Photographers’ 11th Annual Exhibit.Popular Photography, Dec 1946, Vol. 19, No. 6. Pages 74, 75, 176
