WASHINGTON — As President Donald J. Trump’s tenure came to an end, the chief White House photographer, who had traveled the world with him and spent countless hours inside the White House snapping pictures, notified Mr. Trump’s aides that she intended to publish a book collecting some of her most memorable images.
This was hardly a radical idea: Official photographers from every White House since President Ronald Reagan’s have published their own books. Barack Obama and George W. Bush were so supportive that they wrote forewords for them.
But like so much else involving Mr. Trump, the plan by his chief photographer, Shealah Craighead, did not follow this bipartisan norm.
First, aides to Mr. Trump asked her for a cut of her book advance payment, in exchange for his writing a foreword and helping promote the book, according to former associates of Mr. Trump.
Then Mr. Trump’s team asked Ms. Craighead to hold off on her book project to allow the former president to take Ms. Craighead’s photos and those of other White House staff photographers and publish his own book, which is now selling for as much as $230 a copy.
That the profits from Ms. Craighead’s labor are now going into Mr. Trump’s pocket has left several of Mr. Trump’s former aides upset — but not exactly surprised.
“Shea’s a very talented photographer and this was really all of her hard work,” said Stephanie Grisham, who served as the White House press secretary for Mr. Trump and wrote her own book, referring to Ms. Craighead by her nickname. “I just keep thinking: What a shame that he is actually now profiting off of it. But then again, this is the guy who is hawking caps and all kinds of stuff right now to raise money for himself.”
Eric Draper, who was the chief White House photographer during Mr. Bush’s tenure, said the move was disrespectful to Ms. Craighead.
“It’s a slap in the face,” Mr. Draper said, adding that he had spoken with Ms. Craighead last year about her plan to do her own book. “I would be disappointed if I were in her shoes.”
Taylor Budowich, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, did not dispute that an aide had discussed the possibility of Mr. Trump writing a foreword for Ms. Craighead’s book and perhaps taking a cut of her advance. Her tentative deal with a publisher involved an advance in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, one industry executive said.
Instead, Mr. Budowich said, Mr. Trump decided to first do his own book, a separate deal that came with a much bigger, multimillion advance.
“President Trump has always had an eye for beautiful and engaging curation, which came alive through the pages of his book,” he said in a statement.
Ms. Craighead, in an interview, said she did not want to publicly comment on matters involving a former client. But she did confirm that she has decided, at least for now, to kill her own book project.
“I stay apolitical as possible, as I am a neutral historical documentarian,” she said. “By staying neutral I am able to remain a keen observer.”
The 317-page book Mr. Trump published in December, titled “Our Journey Together,” includes no photo credits. It does not mention any of the photographers who took the images until the last page, where he briefly offered a “grateful acknowledgment” to “all the phenomenal White House photographers,” listing them by name, including Ms. Craighead, whose pictures make up much of the book.
There is no legal prohibition on Mr. Trump assembling and publishing photographs that a White House staff member took during his tenure; under federal law, those photographs are considered in 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 from the Trump White House, a third of them listing Ms. Craighead as the photographer.
But in dealing with Ms. Craighead, Mr. Trump appears to have become the first former president to try to make money from a book planned by a former White House photographer, said John Bredar, a documentary filmmaker and author who has studied the history of the White House photographers. (Profits from the book published by George H.W. Bush’s chief photographer, David Valdez, were donated to his presidential library, Mr. Valdez said in an interview.)
The first volume of the memoir written by Mr. Obama after leaving office included a selection of nearly 50 photos taken by the White House photographer who served during his tenure, Pete Souza. George W. Bush and Bill Clinton also published autobiographies that included some White House photos.
But there has been a long tradition of former White House photographers separately assembling their work into books.
“It’s valuable for each chief photographer to do a book just for the…
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