🔗 Share this article

This is a glowing story in a publication that Donald Trump has frequently admired – but for one catch. The magazine's cover photo, Trump declared, ""might be the most terrible in history".

Time magazine's paean to the president's involvement in brokering a ceasefire in Gaza, headlining its early November edition, was accompanied by a photograph of the president taken from below and with the sun positioned behind him.

The outcome, the president asserts, is "super bad".

"Time wrote a fairly positive story about me, but the picture may be the Worst of All Time", the president posted on his preferred network.

“They ‘disappeared’ my hair, and then had something floating on top of my head that appeared as a floating crown, but an very tiny one. Quite bizarre! I never liked taking pictures from below viewpoints, but this is a super bad picture, and merits public condemnation. What are they doing, and why?”

The president has expressed no secret of his desire to be pictured on the cover of Time and did so on four occasions in the previous year. The obsession has made it as far as Trump’s golf clubs – years ago, the publication requested to remove fake issues exhibited in some of his properties.

The latest edition’s photo was shot by a photographer for Bloomberg at the presidential residence on 5 October.

The shot's viewpoint highlighted negatively the president's jawline and throat – an opportunity that California governor Gavin Newsom took advantage of, with his communications team posting a modified photo with the criticized section obscured.

{The hostages from Israel detained in Gaza have been liberated under the opening part of the president's diplomatic initiative, together with a Palestinian prisoner release. The arrangement may become a defining accomplishment of the president's renewed tenure, and it might signify a key shift for the Middle East.

At the same time, a defense of the president’s appearance has been offered by an unexpected source: the spokesperson at the Russian foreign ministry intervened to criticise the "self-incriminating" picture decision.

"It’s astonishing: a photo exposes those who selected it than about the subject. Just unwell persons, people obsessed with malice and resentment –possibly even deviants – could have picked this picture", she wrote on Telegram.

Considering the favorable images of Biden that that magazine used on the cover, despite his physical infirmity, the situation is self-revealing for the magazine", she added.

The answer to the president's inquiries – why did they choose this, and why? – might involve creatively capturing a feeling of authority according to a picture editor, an Australian publication's photo editor.

"The actual photo itself technically is good," she notes. "They chose this shot because they wanted the president to look heroic. Gazing upward gives a sense of their majesty and the president's visage actually looks thoughtful and almost somewhat divine. It’s not often you see images of the president in such a calm instance – the image has a softness to it."

His hair seems to vanish because the sunlight behind him has overexposed that part of the image, producing a glowing aura, she says. Even though the feature's heading pairs nicely with the president's look in the image, "it's impossible to satisfy the subject matter."

Nobody enjoys being captured from low angles, and while all of the conceptual elements of the image are highly effective, the visual appeal are not flattering."

The publication reached out to Time magazine for a statement.