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This is a favorable story in a magazine that Donald Trump has frequently admired – with one exception. The front-page image, Trump declared, "may be the Worst of All Time".

Time magazine's tribute to Trump's role in brokering a Gaza ceasefire, featured on its November 10 cover, was accompanied by a photo of Trump taken from below while the sun shining from the back.

The result, he says, is ""extremely poor".

"Time Magazine wrote a fairly positive story about me, but the photo may be the Worst of All Time", Trump wrote on his preferred network.

“My hair was obscured, and then there was something floating my head that seemed like a hovering crown, but extremely small. Really weird! I have never liked being shot from underneath, but this is a extremely poor image, and it deserves to be called out. What are they doing, and why?”

The president has expressed no secret of his desire to be pictured on the cover of Time and did so four times last year. The preoccupation has extended to the president's resorts – previously, the publication requested to remove mocked up covers on display at some of his properties.

The most recent cover image was captured by a photographer for Bloomberg at the presidential residence on 5 October.

Its angle highlighted negatively Trump’s chin and neck – an opportunity that the governor of California Gavin Newsom did not miss, with the governor's office sharing an altered image with the criticized section obscured.

{The hostages from Israel held in Gaza have been freed under the first phase of Donald Trump's peace plan, together with a freeing of Palestinian inmates. This agreement might turn into a defining accomplishment of the president's renewed tenure, and it may represent a pivotal moment for the Middle East.

At the same time, a support for Trump's image has come from unusual quarters: the spokesperson at Russia’s ministry of foreign affairs stepped in to criticise the "damaging" image choice.

It's remarkable: a image says more about those who picked it than about the person in it. Only sick people, people obsessed with malice and animosity –maybe even degenerates – could have selected such an image", she wrote on her social channel.

Considering the favorable images of President Biden that the same publication featured on the front, notwithstanding his health issues, the situation is self-revealing for the magazine", she added.

The answer to Trump’s questions – what were Time’s editors doing, and why? – may be something to do with creatively capturing a impression of strength according to Carly Earl, an Australian publication's photo editor.

The image itself is well-executed," she notes. "They picked this image because they wanted the president to look heroic. Looking up at a person creates an impression of their importance and the president's visage actually looks reflective and almost a bit ethereal. It's rare you see images of the president in such a serene moment – the picture feels tender."

His hair looks erased because the sunlight behind him has overexposed that part of the image, producing a glowing aura, she says. Even though the story’s headline marries well with Trump’s expression in the image, "one cannot constantly gratify the person photographed."

Nobody enjoys being shot from underneath, and while all of the conceptual elements of the image are quite powerful, the visual appeal are not flattering."

The news outlet approached the magazine for a statement.