Christopher Anderson, the photographer whose close-ups of top White House officials were featured in a bombshell Vanity Fair article published this week, is defending his work after his portrait subjects were brutally dragged online.
“Very close-up portraiture has been a fixture in a lot of my work over the years,” Anderson told The Independent. “Particularly, political portraits that I’ve done over the years. I like the idea of penetrating the theater of politics.”
Anderson’s photographs of seven members of President Donald Trump’s inner circle, senior White House aide Stephen Miller, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance, have divided people online and prompted viewers to dissect the details in their faces.
Rubio slammed the portraits on X following online mockery, stating, “It is obvious to most people that Vanity Fair deliberately manipulated pictures and reported statements without context to try and make the WH team look bad.”
It is obvious to most people that Vanity Fair deliberately manipulated pictures and reported statements without context to try and make the WH team look bad
And there is nobody more loyal or committed to President Trump’s mission than Susie Wiles. She is one of the main reasons…
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) December 17, 2025
And White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino lashed out at anti-Trump political action committee The Lincoln Project after it made fun of his hairstyle as, calling it a “Hitler youth ass haircut.”
“They know exactly what referring to me as Hitler does with 2.8 million followers— These are some sick and twisted bastards,” Scavino wrote on X.
Dan Scavino and Marco Rubio have both spoken out amid the uproar around portraits published in Vanity Fair. They are pictured here in unrelated photos from Getty Images.
The photos also drew criticism from others on the right, with some contrasting Anderson’s work with a prior Vanity Fair photograph of Joe Biden’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
Anderson told The Washington Post he conceived of the close-up portraits “many years ago” for his 2014 book “Stump.” The book, he said, was “all close-ups” and was his “attempt to circumnavigate the stage-managed image of politics and cut through the image that the public relations team wants to be presented.”
“I know there’s a lot to be made with, ‘Oh, he intentionally is trying to make people look bad’ and that kind of thing — that’s not the case,” Anderson argued in his interview with the Independent. “If you look at my photograph work, I’ve done a lot of close-ups in the same style with people of all political stripes.”
The official whose portrait drew the most attention was press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who Vanity Fair labeled “The Mouth Piece,” with many commenting on marks that appeared to be lip injection sites on her upper lip.
“Genius. The injection marks really sing in this one!” one comment with over 6,000 likes read.
But the mockery of Leavitt has sparked its own backlash.
“This isn’t the woke own you think it is,” one X user wrote, in response to a post from the Democratic National Committee sharing Leavitt’s portrait. “Utilizing misogyny (this post mocks her looks, specifically related to age) against bad women is still proliferating misogyny. To oppose misogyny is to oppose the existence of misogyny as an available tool.”
Karoline Leavitt was another Trump official photographed in extreme detail by photographer Christopher Anderson. She is seen here in a different image by Andrew Cabellero-Reynolds.
ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP via Getty Images
Another read, “I think it’s crazy to comment on a woman’s (no matter the woman) appearance to perpetuate the idea that « looking old » is the worst thing that could happen to us. 28 doesn’t look the same for everyone, move on.”
Anderson responded to the Leavitt controversy in his interview with The Washington Post.
“People seem to be shocked that I didn’t use Photoshop to retouch out blemishes and her injection marks. I find it shocking that someone would expect me to retouch out those things,” he said, adding that Leavitt had her own “personal groomer” at the shoot.
He stated, “I didn’t put the injection sites on her.”