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It is a positive feature in a publication that Donald Trump has consistently praised – except for one issue. The front-page image, Trump declared, "may be the Worst of All Time".

Time's paean to Trump's role in mediating a truce for Gaza, featured on its November 10 cover, was presented alongside a photograph of the president taken from below and with the sun behind his head.

The effect, he says, is "super bad".

"Time wrote a relatively good story about me, but the image may be the lowest quality in history", he shared on his preferred network.

“They removed my hair, and then had a shape drifting on top of my head that looked like a suspended coronet, but an extremely small one. Truly strange! I always disliked taking pictures from low perspectives, but this is a terrible picture, and merits public condemnation. Why did they do this, and why?”

Donald Trump has shown clear his wish to be pictured on Time magazine's front page and did so four times last year. This fixation has extended to Trump’s golf clubs – previously, the publication requested to remove fake issues on display at some of his properties.

The most recent cover image was captured by Graeme Sloane for a news agency at the presidential residence on October 5.

The perspective highlighted negatively the president's jawline and throat – a chance that California governor Newsom did not miss, with his communications team sharing an altered image with the offending area blurred.

{The hostages from Israel in Gaza have been freed under the initial stage of Donald Trump's peace plan, in exchange for a freeing of Palestinian inmates. The deal could be a major success of the president's renewed tenure, and it may represent a key shift for the region.

Simultaneously, a defence of his portrayal has come from an unexpected source: the communications chief at Russia’s ministry of foreign affairs came forward to criticise the "damaging" photo selection.

It's amazing: a photo reveals far more about those who picked it than about the individual pictured. Just unwell persons, people filled with spite and animosity –perhaps even perverts – could have selected such an image", she wrote on the messaging platform.

Considering the favorable images of President Biden that the same publication featured on the front, despite his physical infirmity, the story is simply self-incriminating for the publication", she added.

The response to his queries – what were Time’s editors doing, and why? – could be related to artistically representing a feeling of authority according to a picture editor, Guardian Australia’s picture editor.

The photograph technically is professionally taken," she explains. "They selected this photo because they wanted Trump to look commanding. Gazing upward evokes a feeling of their grandeur and his expression actually looks contemplative and almost slightly angelic. It’s not often you see photos of Trump in such a calm instance – the picture feels tender."

His hair looks erased because the rear illumination has bleached that section of the image, generating a radiant circle, she adds. Although the story’s headline pairs nicely with Trump’s expression in the image, "one cannot constantly gratify the person photographed."

Nobody enjoys being shot from underneath, and although all of the thematic components of the image are very strong, the aesthetics are not complimentary."

The publication approached the magazine for feedback.