A White House aide startled one of the Vanity Fair staffers during a photoshoot to illustrate a bombshell report based on interviews with President Donald Trump's chief of staff.
Mark Guiducci, the magazine's global editorial director, accompanied photographer Christopher Anderson and writer Chris Whipple, among other staffers, to photograph White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and other high-ranking Trump administration officials for the photoshoot last month for the two-part story published this week, and he wrote up a chatty account of the day.
"Vice President JD Vance was our first subject of the day," Guiducci wrote. "'I’ll give you $100 for every person you make look really shitty compared to me,' he said as [an editorial assistant] metered the light. 'And $1,000 if it’s Marco.' When Christopher said that he had been a conflict photographer and with the first battalion to enter Baghdad, Vance replied, 'Oh yeah, we were greeted as liberators. For two f------ days.'"
"Christopher explained that he was shooting on film as well as digital, because the exposure is physically larger and therefore captures more information, more color. 'It has soul,' [the creative director] said. 'That’s good,” the vice president replied, 'because I think I read in Vanity Fair that I have no soul.'"
Guiducci described interactions with other officials and described their offices, but he also revealed an interaction with a Wiles aide who surprised him with her directions.
"Eventually, Wiles’s executive assistant informed us that we would not be allowed to photograph either the 'Presidential Walk of Fame' or the Rose Garden, as we’d asked," Guiducci wrote. “'Those are very special to the president,' she said. 'They’re his spaces.'"
"Actually, I wanted to remind her, they’re not," he added.