🔗 Share this article

It is a favorable article in a publication that the president has consistently praised – with one exception. The front-page image, he stated, "may be the Worst of All Time".

Time magazine's praise to Trump's role in brokering a Gaza ceasefire, headlining its early November edition, was paired with a image of the president captured from underneath and with the sun shining from the back.

The outcome, the president asserts, is ""extremely poor".

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

“They ‘disappeared’ my hair, and then had a shape drifting on top of my head that appeared as a suspended coronet, but an very tiny one. Quite bizarre! I always disliked taking pictures from below viewpoints, but this is a terrible picture, and merits public condemnation. What are they doing, and why?”

The president has expressed clear his wish to feature on the cover of Time and did so four times last year. This fixation has made it as far as his golf courses – previously, the magazine asked him to remove mocked up covers shown in a few of his establishments.

The latest edition’s photo was captured by a photographer for a news agency at the presidential residence on the fifth of October.

The perspective was unflattering to Trump’s chin and neck – an opening that California governor Newsom seized, with his press office sharing an altered image with the criticized section obscured.

{The living Israeli hostages held in Gaza have been liberated under the first phase of the president's diplomatic initiative, in exchange for a freeing of Palestinian inmates. The deal may become a major success of his next term, and it could mark a strategic turning point for the Middle East.

At the same time, a defence of his portrayal has been offered by an unexpected source: the communications chief at the Russian foreign ministry intervened to criticise the "revealing" photo selection.

It's remarkable: a photograph exposes those who picked it than about the subject. Only sick people, people obsessed with malice and animosity –possibly even deviants – could have selected such an image", she wrote on Telegram.

In light of the positive pictures of President Biden that that magazine used on the cover, even with his age-related challenges, the case is self-damaging for Time", she added.

The explanation for the president's inquiries – what did the editors intend, and why? – could be related to innovatively depicting a sense of power says Carly Earl, Guardian Australia’s picture editor.

The image itself is well-executed," she notes. "They picked this image because they wanted the president to look commanding. Staring up at someone evokes a feeling of their majesty and the president's visage actually looks thoughtful and almost slightly angelic. It's rare you see photos of Trump in such a calm instance – the image has a softness to it."

His hair appears to “disappear” because the sunlight behind him has overexposed that part of the image, creating a halo effect, she adds. Even though the story’s headline marries well with his facial expression in the image, "it's impossible to satisfy the individual in question."

"No one likes being captured from low angles, and although all of the conceptual elements of the image are very strong, the visual appeal are unflattering."

The Guardian contacted the periodical for feedback.