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The oldest sitting president and the longest-lived former president held a historic visit last week.
And it led to a pretty epic photo.
President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden visited former President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn in Plains, Ga., on Thursday, which was Biden’s 100th day in office. The private meeting was the first in-person get-together that the two presidents and longtime friends have had since Biden took office. Carter, 96, and the 93-year-old former first lady were unable to attend the inauguration in January due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“It was great to see President Carter,” Biden said Thursday night. “We sat and talked about the old days.”
The visit between the Bidens and the Carters was part of Biden’s swing through Georgia last week to talk up the accomplishments of his first 100 days in office, as well as to continue trying to sell his $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan and $1.8 trillion American Families Plan.
And the meeting was immortalized in this photo shared by the Carter Center on Monday:
“We’re pleased to share this wonderful photo from the @POTUS and @FLOTUS visit to see the Carters in Plains, Ga.!” the post reads. But a combination of the angle of the photo, the type of lens used, and perhaps the scale of the furniture has skewed the perspective a bit…and the photo appears to show Joe and Jill Biden towering over miniature versions of the Carters sitting in tiny armchairs. The image went viral on Monday and Tuesday, with many people asking why the Bidens appeared to be giants visiting the tiny Carters in a dollhouse.
While some natural physical changes during aging could shrink a person’s height, it’s doubtful that President Biden is three times the size of the former first lady. In fact, Jonathan Alter, who wrote “His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, A Life” tells the Washington Post that the Carters are not “tiny people,” but rather fall into “the medium to smaller size among presidents and first ladies.”
A professional photographer also explained to the Guardian that using a wide lens while standing close to subjects in a small space can distort a photo so that those people closest to the camera appear gigantic, while those further away from the camera shrink. Similar tricks of the eye have been used in movies like Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy to make the actors playing the more diminutive hobbits appear much smaller than the actors playing humans and wizards, for example.
