Merkel and Trump G7 Summit Photograph

Submission 19,541

Part of a series on Accidental Renaissance. [View Related Entries]

About

Merkel and Trump G7 Summit Photograph refers to a viral picture of German Chancellor Angela Merkel leaning on a table in front of United States President Donald Trump at the G7 Summit in early June 2018.

Origin

On June 9th, 2018, Angela Merkel's verified Instagram^[1] account posted a photograph in which she is shown leaning on to a table in front of President Trump seated with his arms crossed (shown below). Within 48 hours, the picture gained over 68,400 likes.

Spread

Shortly after, BuzzFeed News writer David Mack reposted the photo on Twitter, where it garnered upwards of 144,200 likes and 50,300 retweets in two days.^[2] Meanwhile, Redditor somebeddict posted the photograph to /r/pics,^[4] where it received upwards of 87,200 points (86% upvoted) and 8,300 comments in the same time frame.

On June 10th, Redditor DavidGladwin submitted a different picture taken from a slightly different moment titled "A second can change a photo's meaning entirely" to /r/pics (shown below). Within 24 hours, the post gathered over 47,300 points (63% upvoted) and 4,300 comments.

That day, Twitter user @cameron_tiff^[6] tweeted several art-themed edits of the original photograph, gathering more than 8,700 likes and 4,400 retweets within 24 hours.

Also on June 10th, Redditor AnotherNewme posted a photoshop of the image in which Trump is shown seated in a baby chair with a bowl of noodles on his head to /r/pics,^[7] garnering upwards of 49,100 points (67% upvoted) and 2,800 comments over the next day (shown below).

On June 11th, The Atlantic^[3] published an article about the photo titled "That Merkel Photo Is More Like a Meme Than a Renaissance Painting," which compared the polarized reactions to the image to the Yanny or Laurel audio clip.