In mid-December, Vanity Fair triggered a media frenzy when they published Christopher Anderson’s photographs of Trump’s White House inner circle. As part of a two-part article on his second term, the series of images expose this administration pore by pore for what they really are: human.
Immediately after their release, the comment sections beneath Vanity Fair’s Instagram posts were saturated with people revelling in the pleasures of seeing these figures so honestly captured.
Some were quick to praise Anderson for producing such fantastically ‘bad’ photographs, meaning to say raw, unfiltered and imperfect; refreshing in a world conditioned to touch-ups and AI reconstructions. Anderson has spoken about his firm adherence to his photojournalistic vision in his work, aiming to capture what he sees in the moment as opposed to any premeditated intentions. In this case, the result is a collection of disorganised, worn, awkward individuals.
One photograph that quickly gained notoriety was a close-up shot of Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. The photograph’s framing breaks her face down into individual features, highlighting eyelashes somewhat clumped together by mascara, a nose powdered with an off shade of orange, and most poignantly, a pair of glossed lips outlined by the obtrusive puncture marks of filler injections.
No matter where you stand politically, it is important to acknowledge the misogyny often masked as serious political critique that has influenced much of the criticism Leavitt has received on account of this particular photograph. Her attempt to conform to the pressures of a visual beauty standard is made evident here and is an attempt that many deem insufficient, as the post’s top comment revealing says: “She’s 28 btw… why does she look 50+”.
Such commentary was likely not Anderson’s intention, but to write it off entirely would ignore the fact that these figures are being judged by the same standards with which people judge themselves. However problematic that may be, it is because they are seen to be human. People vulnerable in, and to, their humanness.
All seven who were individually photographed appear remarkably unremarkable. Disassociate them from their roles and they could be anyone.
I find this phenomenon fascinating, though it is not entirely new. I first noticed it playing out in other media when watching Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing (2012). The documentary follows a group of individuals as they recreate for the cameras the actions they took to torture and murder those alleged to have been opposed to the New Order regime as part of the Indonesian mass killings of 1965-66. Anwar Congo, who was individually responsible for the death of around 1,000 people, is a perpetrator challengingly shown to be human: he is recorded engaging with children, tending to animals, and enjoying the pleasures of dance.
Though Congo’s empathy towards others abhorrently lacked in the past, and remorse has not yet entered his vocabulary, against the backdrop of his day-to-day activities he is shown to be haunted by a dawning awareness of the consequences of his actions. In the closing scene his body seemingly desires to purge itself of what his mind cannot reckon with as he keels over and retches on the same rooftop he took the lives of many.
And so, The Act of Killing is such an uncomfortable watch because it forces us to see Anwar Congo as human rather than as some fantastical monster. As Chris Hedges put it in Truthout, “it is not the demonized, easily digestible caricature of a mass murderer that most disturbs us. It is the human being”.
Jonathan Glazer similarly relies on this in his Holocaust film The Zone of Interest (2023) which also provides the perspective of perpetrators and “their ordinariness”, an element he told the Hollywood Reporter he felt was missing from cinematic depictions of the Nazi regime. We see Rudolf Höss, commandant of Auschwitz, tend to his wife and children as he reads them stories and shows a consistent desire for them to remain united as a family. As the mundane familiarity of everyday domestic life is placed before us, albeit fictionally reimagined, we cannot help but see elements of our own lives within theirs, and in doing so are forced to see the Höss’s as painfully human.
Now, despite the great harm Trump’s second term has already inflicted, from ICE raids and mass deportation to those suffering as a result of federal welfare cuts, I’m not suggesting a direct comparison be made between his White House and those responsible for these mass killings.
However, I use these examples because, like Christopher Anderson’s photographs that powerfully lower this administration to the level of the people they govern, they work to provide alternative illustrations of this point. If you were to remove all these individuals from the context of their roles, actions, and pasts, they appear on the surface alike to you and me.
Let me be clear: this humanisation does not serve the purpose of empathy or absolution. Rather, it enables us to demythologise Trump’s inner circle so as to remind ourselves that they, like him, remain expendable and replaceable.
Failure to acknowledge this risks positioning them as immovable. It would be to resign to their ever-increasing exercises of undemocratic authority.
That is why seeing the human is vital. It is both a prerequisite for accountability and a recognition that allows us to hold onto the hope for change needed in the fight to uphold democracy in a post-truth society.
It returns political agency to the realm of decisions that may be contested, reversed, and most crucially, resisted.
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