As President Donald Trump’s term came to an end, the White House Chief Photographer, who had traveled the world with him and spent countless hours taking pictures inside the White House, notified Trump aides of his intention to publish a collection of his images. more memorable.
It was far from a radical idea: official White House photographers from every administration since Ronald Reagan’s have released books with their pictures. Barack Obama and George W. Bush were so supportive that they even wrote prefaces to the collections.
But, as has been the case with many other things connected with Trump, the plan by his lead photographer, Shealah Craighead, has not gone ahead as usual in both Republican and Democratic administrations.
For starters, Trump aides asked Craighead for a portion of the advance she received for the book. On the other hand, according to former associates of Trump, he would write a foreword and help to publicize the book.
Trump’s team then asked Craighead to delay his book project so the former president, using photos taken by Craighead and other White House photographers, could launch his own book, which is now selling for as much as $230. the copy.
The fact that the profits from Craighead’s work were going into Trump’s pocket displeased many of his former advisers but did not come as a surprise to them.
Calling Craighead by his nickname, Stephanie Grisham, who was Trump’s White House press officer and published her own book, commented: “Shea is a very talented photographer, and this is all the fruit of her hard work. to think it’s a shame that Trump is now cashing in on her work. But the fact is, this is a guy who’s been selling caps and all sorts of stuff at the moment to raise money for his own use.”
Eric Draper, who was the White House’s chief photographer during the Bush administration, felt that what was done was a lack of respect for Craighead.
“It’s a slap in the face,” Draper said, adding that he spoke with Craighead last year about his plan to publish his own book. “In her place, I would be disappointed.”
Taylor Budowich, a spokesman for Trump, did not deny that an aide had raised the possibility that Trump would write a foreword to Craighead’s book and receive a portion of the advance paid to the photographer. Her interim deal with a publisher involved paying an advance of hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to an industry executive.
Instead, Budowich said, Trump decided to first publish his own book, in a separate agreement for which he received a much larger advance, worth millions of dollars.
“President Trump has always been interested in a beautiful and interesting production, something that has come to life in the pages of his book,” the spokesman said in a press release.
Craighead said he didn’t want to make public statements about issues involving a former client. But she confirmed that she has decided to cancel her own planned book, at least for now.
“I’m as apolitical as possible, a neutral historical documentarian,” she said. “By remaining neutral, I manage to remain an attentive observer.”
The 317-page book that Trump released in December, titled “Our Journey Together,” does not include photo credits. It doesn’t mention any of the photographers who took the images, until the last page, in which the former president offers a brief “thank you” to “all the phenomenal photographers in the White House” (listing them by name, including Craighead) whose work constitutes much of the book.
There is nothing in the law that prohibits Trump from gathering and publishing photos that a White House official took during his tenure; By federal law, these photos are considered part of the public domain and not subject to copyright. There is a public Flickr account, now managed by the National Archives, that has 14,995 photos of Trump’s White House, a third of which bear Craighead’s name as the photographer.
But Trump appears to be the first former US president to try to cash in on a book by a former White House photographer, said documentarian and writer John Bredar, who has studied the history of White House photographers. (Profits from a book published by George HW Bush’s chief photographer David Valdez were donated to the former president’s presidential library, according to the photographer.)
According to former White House officials, the plan to publish “Our Journey Together” was hastily hatched when Craighead had already selected a literary agent, negotiated a contract to publish his book and obtained a promise from Trump to write the foreword.
Craighead had some doubts about whether he wanted to go ahead with his book, telling others he was not comfortable publishing a book that could be seen as an endorsement or a critique of Trump.
It was while she was debating this issue that she was told by a Trump representative that Trump could not give her a foreword to his book right away because he had a “no competition” clause with the publisher of his book.
Soon after, the Trump and Donald Trump Jr. began emailing the names on his political fundraising list, inviting his supporters to buy “Our Journey Together”, possibly to give as a Christmas gift. It is an example of how Trump, since leaving the White House, has been mixing his political effort and his pursuit of personal profit.
Trump’s book was published by Winning Team Publishing, a company co-founded last October by Donald Trump Jr. and Sergio Gor, a former Capitol Hill aide and Republican campaign official.
Gor said the first print run of 300,000 copies is sold out. As the copies not signed by the president sold at $75 each, this suggests that gross sales would have netted at least $20 million, assuming many copies were not donated. In addition to the upfront payment, Trump will likely receive a share of the book’s sales.
