What Is Happening in This Photo of the Bidens and Carters?
Can Someone (Anyone!) Explain What Is Going On in This Photo of the Bidens and Carters?
I'll never forget the moment I first laid my eyes on this photo of the Bidens and Carters. Like the first time I met my fiancé or when I found out I had been accepted by my top-choice school, that moment will forever be embroidered into the fragile fabric of my mind. Joe and Jill Biden: so big. And Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter: suddenly so small! But how?
On the evening of May 3, the former president and first lady's Carter Centre unknowingly shattered the internet when it released this photo with our current first couple. Now, because of some camera trickery or creative liberties of the lens variety, the photo made it appear as though Joe and Jill were fairy-tale giants visiting the toy home wherein Jimmy and Rosalynn reside. Mind you, they are all — according to a cursory internet search — around the same height: Joe is 6'0", Jimmy is 5'10", Jill is 5'6", and Rosalynn is 5'5". I know there's a logical reason for all this, but I'd prefer to believe this is the premise of a 1980s-inspired hijinks comedy about a high schooler's science experiment gone wrong.
The caption is my favourite part, and perhaps the most chaotic component of all with absolutely no mention of the profound optical illusion taking place. Instead, the Carter Centre simply said it was "pleased" to share the "wonderful" photo. And, well, I suppose I'll now be "pleased" to think about this "wonderful" photo for a long, long time.
