🔗 Share this article

It is a favorable story in a periodical that the president has long exalted – except for one issue. The magazine's cover photo, he stated, ""might be the most terrible in history".

Time magazine's praise to Donald Trump's part in facilitating a Gaza ceasefire, featured on its November 10 cover, was accompanied by a photograph of the president captured from underneath while the sun behind his head.

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

"Time wrote a relatively good story about me, but the image may be the most awful ever", the president posted on his social media platform.

“They removed my hair, and then had a shape drifting on top of my head that looked like a suspended coronet, but an extremely small one. Really weird! I never liked taking pictures from below viewpoints, but this is a extremely poor picture, and merits public condemnation. Why did they do this, and why?”

The president has expressed clear his wish to feature on Time magazine's front page and achieved this four times last year. The preoccupation has extended to his golf courses – years ago, the magazine asked him to remove fake issues shown in some of his properties.

This issue's photograph was taken by a photographer for Bloomberg at the presidential residence on October 5.

Its angle did no favours for Trump’s chin and neck – a chance that California governor Newsom seized, with his communications team posting a modified photo with the offending area pixelated.

{The living Israeli hostages held in Gaza have been released under the first phase of Trump's ceasefire agreement, in exchange for a freeing of Palestinian inmates. The deal may become a major success of the president's renewed tenure, and it might signify a strategic turning point for the Middle East.

Meanwhile, a defence of the president’s appearance has come from an unexpected source: the director of information at Russia’s ministry of foreign affairs intervened to condemn the "damaging" picture decision.

"It’s astonishing: a photo says more about those who picked it than about the subject. Just unwell persons, people driven by hatred and resentment –perhaps even perverts – could have picked this picture", she wrote on her social channel.

"And given the complimentary photos of Biden that the periodical used on the cover, despite his physical infirmity, the story is simply self-incriminating for Time", she said.

The answer to Trump’s questions – what were Time’s editors doing, and why? – may be something to do with creatively capturing a feeling of authority says a picture editor, an Australian publication's photo editor.

The image itself technically is good," she says. "They picked this image because they wanted trump to look impressive. Staring up at someone evokes a feeling of their importance and the president's visage actually looks contemplative and almost slightly angelic. It's uncommon you see pictures of him in such a calm instance – the image has a softness to it."

His hair looks erased because the rear illumination has overexposed that part of the image, producing a glowing aura, she adds. Even though the article's title marries well with his facial expression in the image, "you can’t always please the person photographed."

Nobody enjoys being shot from underneath, and although all of the artistic aspects of the image are highly effective, the appearance are not complimentary."

The news outlet approached the periodical for feedback.