Trump’s official inauguration portrait: Why is this man glaring?

WASHINGTON – Tech billionaires, corporate chieftains and stars such as Carrie Underwood are flocking to Washington to fete Donald Trump. There has been such a stampede of big-money donors that his inaugural committee has run out of VIP tickets and perks.

And yet here is the President-elect, positively glaring in the official photograph his aides released on Jan 16 in advance of his inauguration.

The image, which will be printed inside the programmes his supporters will clutch come Jan 20, does not exactly scream celebration. Trump is shown sternly squinting, bathed in eerie, David Lynchian lighting from below, high-powered strobes reflected in his eyes.

One entertainment photographer said the lighting and technique are reminiscent of photographer Jill Greenberg’s controversial End Times series of crying children.

Whereas other men on the cusp of the presidency have offered anodyne, smiling inaugural images, the photo revealed on Jan 16 was – as with all things Trump – dramatic and startling. It is certainly reminiscent of the purposeful pose he struck for his 2024 mugshot, taken by the sheriff’s office in Fulton County, Georgia, in that state’s election interference case.

Asked to interpret the President-elect’s expression in his inauguration photo, his press secretary, Ms Karoline Leavitt, replied: “America. Is. Back.”

As a subject, Trump “knows what he’s looking for”, said Ms Shealah Craighead, the chief White House photographer during his first administration. “He’s very hands-on. He will ask to see the photos on the back of the camera or on a computer screen while it’s happening in real time so he can decide if it’s headed in the right direction. If he likes what he sees, he will ask to see tangible paper prints rather than on a computer.”

Some saw in the image a signal of the retribution and strong hand that Trump promised on the campaign trail. Many of his supporters erupted in glee about the tone they saw as being set for the new era in Washington. “Dad is home,” Mr Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist and media figure, wrote on social media platform X.

Others who have studied Trump over the years say he has been doing a version of this pose for a long time, and that the intense look has evolved from the days of The Apprentice to his mugshot and then his raised fist after the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania.

“If Donald Trump’s old Clint Eastwood ‘High Plains Drifter’ squint got married to the Georgia mugshot photo, they would have produced this inauguration photo,” said Mr Timothy O’Brien, a Trump biographer. “And the fact that Trump signed off on it means he loved it.”

In the past, Trump has told photographers who have taken his portrait that he would like to appear Churchillian. On the first day of Trump’s first term as president, he restored a bust of Winston Churchill to the Oval Office.

This new portrait – which was taken a few weeks ago by Mr Daniel Torok, Trump’s chief photographer – was intended specifically for the Jan 20 inauguration. Soon, a different photo will be selected as Trump’s official presidential portrait; that image will be distributed to government agencies and to US embassies around the world.

Those official portraits often offer a glimpse of both an individual president’s persona and the mood of the nation.

Mr Pete Souza, who was the White House chief photographer under Mr Barack Obama, said the 44th president did not want to smile much in his official portrait. “We were in the middle of a recession,” Mr Souza said. “I think that probably affected the way we did that first photo where Obama had not a full smile, kind of just, like, a hint of a smile.”

Last time, Trump did smile. His official portrait taken for his first presidency showed him beaming beatifically. It was a hastily arranged photo taken after many months of delay. According to Ms Craighead, who took it, he never seemed to like it all that much. “The photo that you see today is probably the one he would have loved to have back then,” she said.

A scowl is “his favourite pose”, she added. “He doesn’t want to smile because it seems weak, is probably what he would say.” NYTIMES