The photographer who took what many have described as an “unflattering” portrait of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has spoken out to defend his work.
Leavitt was photographed up close by Christopher Anderson for a Vanity Fair article on President Donald Trump’s “core team.”
Though the magazine also featured portraits of other White House officials, such as Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Vice President JD Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, it was Leavitt’s photo that drew the most attention.
Highlights
- Photographer Christopher Anderson has addressed his extremely close-up portrait of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
- Observers claimed the photo appeared to show injection marks from Leavitt’s lip fillers and described the image as “unflattering.”
- The White House accused the photographer of intentionally taking a “bizarre” portrait to “embarrass” Leavitt.
A portrait of Karoline Leavitt recently featured in a Vanity Fair article gave people plenty to talk about
Image credits: Celal Gunes/Getty Images
Some viewers claimed the close-up shot revealed the press secretary’s lip filler injection marks. The portrait quickly went viral, with people commenting "jumpscare" on Vanity Fair’s Instagram post and speculating about an alleged lip enhancement procedure.
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“Wow. Vanity Fair did Karoline Leavitt dirty with this closeup,” one observer noted.
“Why would they take such an unflattering photo and publish it? They must hate her,” echoed another.
“The lip fillers are visible as daylight,” remarked someone else.
Viewers claimed that the extremely close-up portrait showed injection marks from Leavitt’s lip fillers
“A close look reveals the telltale marks around her lips, classic signs of filler,” a separate user claimed, contrasting the 28-year-old’s older and more recent photos. “Leavitt hasn’t embraced the full Mar-a-Lago aesthetic yet; she’s opting for gradual, incremental enhancement.”
The press secretary has not commented on the portrait or the speculation surrounding her cosmetic procedures.
However, White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told People magazine that Vanity Fair “intentionally photographed Karoline and the White House staff in bizarre ways, and deliberately edited the photos to try to demean and embarrass them."
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Photographer Christopher Anderson—whose work has appeared in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal—has addressed the viral image, denying that he attempted to portray Leavitt in an unflattering way.
“Very close-up portraiture has been a fixture in a lot of my work over the years,” Anderson told The Independent following his Vanity Fair shoot, which was published on Tuesday (December 16).
“Particularly, political portraits that I’ve done over the years. I like the idea of penetrating the theater of politics.”
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The photographer added, “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 explained that he has done several close-ups in the same style of people from across the political spectrum.
Cristopher Anderson, the photographer behind the portrait, has denied that he tried to make Leavitt "look bad"
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When given the opportunity to photograph someone in a position of power, he said his goal is to “cut through the image that politics want to project and get at something that is more truthful.”
Regarding Leavitt’s close-up photo, Anderson shared that he found it “interesting to be even closer” to her than to the other White House officials featured in the Vanity Fair story.
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The photographer also claimed that Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller, who was also featured in the article, approached him after the photoshoot to make a remark about his profession.
“[Miller] came up to me and he said, ‘You know you have a lot of power in the discretion you use to be kind to someone in your photographs,'" Anderson told The Independent. “And I look at him and I said, ‘You know, you do too.’"
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This is not the first time Leavitt has faced plastic surgery speculation. Earlier this year, several plastic surgeons shared side-by-side “then vs. now” photo comparisons and claimed she had received lip injections.
Dr. Michael Niccole, a plastic surgeon from Newport Beach, California, told Glam about the press secretary, “There's no question — her lips appear enhanced, so she's likely had some form of lip augmentation. It also looks like she's had refinement on her nose.”
Similarly, Dr. Frederick Weniger said the “perfect contour lines and angles” of Leavitt’s nose suggest she has undergone a “very well-executed rhinoplasty.” He estimated it to cost between $15,000 to $50,000.
Anderson said he has done many close-up portraits of politicians from both Republican and Democratic parties
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Dr. Weniger also said Leavitt’s lips “appear considerably fuller in more recent photos,” suggesting she may have used fillers to enhance their appearance.
President Trump commented on Leavitt’s appearance in October while departing from Israel on Air Force One.
When a reporter asked how his press secretary was doing, he replied that Leavitt would "never" be replaced and added, "That face... and those lips, they move like a machine gun."
While Leavitt has not addressed her Vanity Fair portrait, she has slammed the article as "disingenuous,” as per The Independent.
The White House Press Secretary has not addressed speculation about lip fillers
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Chief of Staff Wiles also accused the publication of changing the context of her words and labeled the article a “hit piece,” saying it “painted an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative” about the Trump administration.
In the interview, she was quoted as describing Vice President Vance as someone who had been a “conspiracy theorist for a decade.”
Image credits: The Independent
Chris Whipple, the writer who interviewed the White House officials, has responded to the accusations, telling CNN, “Everything in the article was on the record. I recorded every interview.”
People shared their thoughts on Karoline Leavitt's Vanity Fair portrait
