Further reading: Christopher Anderson on his White House portraits (Vanity Fair)
Photography, to me, is not necessarily about making something look pretty, it's about seeing and observing and communicating something about an experience.
— Christopher Anderson in his interview with Vanity Fair
Closer to the end of 2025, Christopher Anderson photographed the Trump administration for Vanity Fair.
Those photos immediately attracted attention because of the choices that were made — sometimes by the sitters, but even more by the photographer himself.
Light switches fighting for the spotlight with human faces, pores in the skin, and wrinkles on the flag; extreme close-ups bordering on discomfort — or, on the contrary, wide shots showing a bit too much of everything.
"My intention is not mockery or cheap shots," Anderson wrote on his Instagram account.
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As Anderson explained in his interview with Vanity Fair, politicians are not celebrities and cannot be treated as such: they are civil servants, office workers, carrying responsibility for the well-being of millions of people.
I wanted to give a sense of what it feels like in their office. The exposed wiring, the paint job of the walls, the art, the things they chose to put in their office. It's interesting, it's fascinating.
Anderson also clarified that the extreme close-ups were shot close to people’s faces: they were not cropped from other photographs, and he did not hide his process.
Since a lot of attention was drawn to a tight portrait in which injection marks are clearly visible on the subject’s lips, he also emphasised that his goal was not "shaming anyone for their physical appearance":
She makes choices in how she presents herself and in how she alters her physical appearance that she presents to the world. I made a choice in photographing her choices in a way that is revealing about her choices.
This series of portraits of Trump’s closest advisers sparked a lot of social media debate, spanning political commentary and art history. Someone compared them to photographs taken during the Nuremberg trials; somebody called them "hilarious." Most people treat the series as a well-defined stance expressed through photography.
For instance, Doug Weaver edited these photos to reimagine them as they might have been if — and only if — they were more conventional business portraits: power poses, an emphasis on faces, a "strong" environment in which every detail works in favour of a shared narrative.
The interview can be read here: Kahina Sekkaï. Christopher Anderson on His White House Photos | Vanity Fair.