Is Trump portrait designed to intimidate Americans?
By Samuel
Warde
It
has been said that a picture paints a thousand words, and looking at Trump’s
official portrait several come to mind – and none of them good.
Having
observed Trump in action for decades, I think it fair to say that there is
little that is not calculated, deliberate, on the part of this individual and
there is every reason to think that the stern intimidating nature of his
portrait was intentional.
As CNN reports, “Trump cares deeply about
visuals, knowing that sometimes pictures speak louder than words.
Sometimes he
even narrates what he’s doing to the camera crews, acting as both the star and
director simultaneously.
The new president is back in his element, hosting a
show, this time not in the ‘Apprentice’ boardroom but in the Oval Office.
Noting
that Trump leans forward, no smile, with an aggressive — arguably menacing —
stare in the photo, Vox reached out to some experts asking them “what’s so strange about Trump’s
White House portrait?”.
Knowing that Trump likes to direct his own photo shoots, it is interesting to
note that the lighting choice was “bizarre,” according to Smith.
 |
| The horror, the terror his portrait evokes becomes more real when compared to |
According to
Smith, the bright white dots appearing beneath Trump’s pupils indicate that he
was being lit from below.
Noting
that “This is not a political post.
Keep the discussions limited to
Photography,” photography website Pixel Pluck confirms the strange nature of the
photograph quoting a Reddit user and photographer MarblesAreDelicious:
“Eyes
not in focus. Weird lighting from the bottom right of the subject. Looks like a
projector background. That expression sucks no matter who wears it.”
Writing
about that facial expression, Vox writes that it’s “solemn” nature is “right
on brand,” adding that: “Trump’s striking gaze … fits right in with the dark
rhetoric Trump espoused throughout his campaign and in his inaugural address.”
Cara
Finnegan, a professor of communication at the University of Illinois
Urbana-Champaign who’s writing a book about presidential photography, told Vox
that “Trump has perfected this sort of serious-looking furrowed-brow scowl,”
adding that “It would be a little weird, I think, if you know at the moment
where he’s giving that inaugural address, the photo that launches is a big
toothy grin.”
Vox adds that
Michael Martinez, a professor of photojournalism at the University of Tennessee
Knoxville who once worked as a photo editor for the Associated Press,”agrees
that the portrait reinforces the image Trump worked to cultivate throughout the
campaign.”
“That’s
what he wants to project, that he’s gonna intimidate people,” Martinez said.
“It doesn’t surprise me that that’s the look that he’s trying to portray in
this.”
In
the final analysis, it is difficult to say exactly what Trump’s intentions
might have been without asking directly. And as Finnegan pointed out to Vox –
anyone viewing the portrait will be doing so through the filter of their own
subjective experience of Trump.
“If
you supported Donald Trump in the election, this might be an image of a very
serious man for a serious time; he might look very committed and patriotic,”
Finnegan said, but “if you opposed Donald Trump, you might find the opposite to
be true.”
