'The all-time low': Donald Trump lashes out at Time's 'extremely poor' cover photo.

It is a positive feature in a magazine that Donald Trump has long exalted – but for one catch. The magazine's cover photo, Trump declared, "may be the Worst of All Time".

Time's tribute to Donald Trump's part in mediating a truce for Gaza, featured on its November 10 cover, was presented alongside a photograph of Trump captured from underneath and with the sun positioned behind him.

The result, Trump claims, is ""terrible".

"The publication wrote a relatively good story about me, but the picture may be the Worst of All Time", Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“They removed my hair, and then had something floating on top of my head that resembled a suspended coronet, but an very tiny one. Quite bizarre! I always disliked taking pictures from underneath angles, but this is a super bad picture, and merits public condemnation. Why did they do this, and why?”

The president has expressed clear his wish to be pictured on the cover of Time and accomplished it four times last year. This fixation has reached his golf courses – previously, the magazine asked him to remove fabricated front pages on display at several of his venues.

This issue's photograph was captured by a photographer for Bloomberg at the presidential residence on 5 October.

Its angle did no favours for his chin and neck area – a chance that the governor of California Newsom did not miss, with his communications team tweeting a version with the problematic part pixelated.

{The living Israeli hostages detained in Gaza have been released under the first phase of Donald Trump's peace plan, in exchange for a release of Palestinian detainees. This agreement could be a signature achievement of Trump's second term, and it may represent a pivotal moment for that part of the world.

Meanwhile, a defense of the president’s appearance has been offered by unusual quarters: the communications chief at Russia’s ministry of foreign affairs intervened to criticise the "damaging" image choice.

It's remarkable: a photograph reveals far more about those who chose it than about the individual pictured. Just unwell persons, people driven by hatred and hatred –maybe even degenerates – could have chosen such a photo", Maria Zakharova shared on her social channel.

In light of the positive pictures of President Biden that that magazine used on the cover, even with his age-related challenges, the story is simply self-incriminating for the publication", she added.

The explanation for Trump’s questions – what did the editors intend, and why? – might involve artistically representing a feeling of authority stated by an imaging expert, a media professional.

The image itself technically is good," she notes. "They picked this image because they wanted trump to look heroic. Gazing upward evokes a feeling of their importance and his expression actually looks reflective and almost somewhat divine. It’s not often you see pictures of him in such a calm instance – the photo appears gentle."

His hair looks erased because the sunlight behind him has overexposed that part of the image, producing a glowing aura, she adds. Although the feature's heading complements the president's look in the image, "one cannot constantly gratify the person photographed."

"No one likes being photographed from below, and while all of the thematic components of the image are very strong, the appearance are unflattering."

The Guardian approached Time magazine for a statement.