🔗 Share this article

It is a favorable article in a magazine that Donald Trump has long exalted – except for one issue. The cover picture, Trump declared, "may be the Worst of All Time".

Time's tribute to Trump's role in mediating a truce for Gaza, leading its 10 November issue, was presented alongside a image of Trump captured from underneath while the sun positioned behind him.

The outcome, he says, is ""extremely poor".

"Time wrote a quite favorable story about me, but the image may be the Worst of All Time", he shared on his social media platform.

“My hair was ‘disappeared’, and then there was an object above my head that seemed like a floating crown, but very tiny. Really weird! I have never liked being shot from underneath, but this is a extremely poor image, and it should be denounced. What are they doing, and why?”

The president has expressed clear his wish to feature on Time’s cover and achieved this on four occasions in the previous year. This fixation has extended to his golf courses – years ago, the publication requested to remove fabricated front pages exhibited in a few of his establishments.

This issue's photograph was shot by Graeme Sloane for Bloomberg at the presidential residence on the fifth of October.

The perspective highlighted negatively Trump’s chin and neck – an opening that California governor Gavin Newsom did not miss, with his communications team sharing an altered image with the offending area obscured.

{The living Israeli hostages in Gaza have been released under the first phase of Trump's ceasefire agreement, alongside a Palestinian prisoner release. This agreement could be a signature achievement of his next term, and it could mark a key shift for that part of the world.

At the same time, a defense of his portrayal has come from unusual quarters: the communications chief at the Russian foreign ministry stepped in to denounce the "self-incriminating" picture decision.

"It’s astonishing: a photograph says more about those who chose it than about the person in it. Only sick people, people obsessed with malice and animosity –perhaps even perverts – could have chosen such a photo", the official wrote on Telegram.

"And given the complimentary photos of Biden that that magazine featured on the front, notwithstanding his health issues, the story is simply self-incriminating for the magazine", she noted.

The response to Trump’s questions – why did they choose this, and why? – might involve artistically representing a sense of power stated by an imaging expert, an Australian publication's photo editor.

The photograph technically is professionally taken," she says. "They picked this image because they wanted the president to look heroic. Gazing upward evokes a feeling of their importance and the president's visage actually looks reflective and almost a bit ethereal. It's rare you see images of the president in such a calm instance – the image has a softness to it."

His hair appears to “disappear” because the rear illumination has bleached that section of the image, producing a glowing aura, she explains. Even though the feature's heading complements his facial expression in the image, "you can’t always please the individual in question."

"No one likes being photographed from below, and while all of the thematic components of the image are quite powerful, the visual appeal are not complimentary."

The publication reached out to the periodical for comment.