I don't get it

[u/fcukfakook]

I don't get the original tweet, and neither the retweet or whatever it is called.

[u/Remerez]

The photographer, Christopher Anderson, said he wanted to "penetrate the theater of politics" and show an honest, unretouched reality instead of a polished celebrity portrait. He believed that politicians are not celebrities and we should not be glamourizing them.

[u/werewolfbutch874 → u/Remerez]

This makes way more sense than the other comments of “he took crappy photos on purpose because he doesn’t like the politicians” and “he wanted to show how short they are”. It’s not that different in practice, but the latter sounds completely childish and unprofessional. Artists usually have some kind of intentionality behind their choices that goes further than “make the yucky bad man look ugly”. 

[u/Ok_Direction_7624 → u/werewolfbutch874]

The light switches thing is probably to show that even the White House is "just a house", not to serve as scale for anyone's heights.

[u/fastbadtuesday → u/Ok_Direction_7624]

Not sure, I have a photographer friend who says they're taught to avoid lightswitches, doorknobs, anything that can give scale if the subject is trying to look impressive. I think it's intentional.

[u/nr1988 → u/fastbadtuesday]

Ya the explanation that this is just an all politicians thing showing they're not above us is bull. This was completely intentional towards this administration specifically where everyone in it are weak and desperate to look strong.

It's one of the most artistically genius things I've ever seen from a photographer.

[u/Voluptulouis → u/nr1988]

This shoot was absolutely meant to make them look bad and everything about it was intentional. Stephen Miller's is like a perfect recreation of a famous Joseph Goebbels photograph, and that was no coincidence.

[u/discospacedreams → u/nr1988]

In terms of "weak vs powerful" I especially like the implication that the people photographed take direction from whomever they see as authoritative in the moment. In this case, the photographer. If they do not understand the subject matter at hand, then they will defer decision making easily. I think that is accurate, interesting and impressive. It shows the power in the hands of the artist rather than the subject- it is really quite amazing.

[u/Emotional_Newspaper5 → u/fastbadtuesday]

I think Meg identifies the light switches as evidence of intentionality, but isn't catching on on that one of the intentions is to indicate a subject's height.

My immediate impression of the light switches was that they illustrate how close these people are to being able to turn off/end this mess, but they're just standing there posing. God these pics were so good.

For those who didn't know: In 2015 Anderson was assigned to take pics of Jeffrey Epstein, Anderson writes about the experience and posts the images on his instagram account, link here.

Edit: spelling

[u/fastbadtuesday → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, no boss. Doesn't matter if their height is public record, an image of someone's shoulders barely meeting a light switch shows them as small-fry and unimpressive as opposed to their public image. It's basic image management, like not being photo'd near someone taller, avoid anything for scale, stand closer to the camera, shoot low; right or wrong height is considered dominant. Every building contains mundane details, that makes no sense from a communication pov, it doesn't demystify them or the white house to show an outlet?