Every line, spot, blemish and blood vessel was captured by Christopher Anderson’s lens. What was he thinking?

On Tuesday, Vanity Fair published a two-part story by Chris Whipple about the inner circle of President Donald Trump’s staff featuring unusually candid conversations with Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. It also featured remarkably unvarnished portraits of Wiles, JD Vance, Marco Rubio and Karoline Leavitt, all photographed by Christopher Anderson.

Whipple’s story has made waves on social media and in Washington, where Wiles’s allies have rushed to her defense. Anderson’s portraits — particularly his extreme close-ups that show his subjects’ faces in minute topographical detail — have also caused a stir among people on both sides of the American political divide.
We caught Anderson by phone at the airport in Paris — where he was about to board a flight to Munich for another shoot — to ask him about the outsize online reaction to his recent photographs and the process behind them.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/power/2025/12/17/vanity-fair-susie-wiles-photos/