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Who photographed Melania Trump's 2000 nude photo shoot for GQ?
Executive summary
Multiple sources identify French photographer Antoine Verglas as the photographer who shot Melania Trump’s 2000 GQ photo session aboard Donald Trump’s private jet (e.g., ABC News and Women’s Wear Daily) [1] [2]. British GQ and other outlets describe the shoot as a January/March 2000 feature that used the plane as a set and later resurfaced in 2016 and beyond [3] [4].
1. Who took the photos: the direct attribution
Contemporary and retrospective reporting repeatedly names Antoine Verglas as the photographer behind the 2000 GQ shoot that featured then-model Melania Knauss; ABC News describes Verglas as “the cameraman for Melania Trump’s 2000 GQ photo shoot aboard Donald Trump’s private jet,” and Women’s Wear Daily and other fashion outlets reproduce Verglas’s own recollections of directing that session [1] [2].
2. What the session was and where it ran
British GQ’s archive material and other listings identify the images as part of a GQ feature published around January–March 2000, staged with a James Bond–inspired concept aboard Donald Trump’s customised Boeing 727 and featuring semi-nude or topless poses, jewelry props and staged scenarios like being “handcuffed to a leather briefcase” [3] [5] [2].
3. Verglas’s own framing and involvement
Interviews with Verglas present him as the session’s organizer and creative lead; he has described the concept (including the “Goldfinger”/James Bond motif and props) and characterized Melania’s demeanor during the shoot as reserved yet professional, noting she insisted there be no “full nudity” in images used by the magazine [1] [2].
4. How the shoot resurfaced in public life
GQ’s photos circulated widely during the 2016 presidential campaign and later; British GQ’s editor Dylan Jones said the magazine dug through archives and re-published the images in 2016, and outlets have noted the images resurfaced again in subsequent years, including coverage and commentary in 2024 and 2025 [3] [4].
5. Competing or corroborating sources and detail differences
Fashion-industry coverage (Women’s Wear Daily, WWD) and mainstream outlets (ABC News) corroborate Verglas as the photographer [1] [2] [5]. British GQ’s own archival discussion confirms the shoot’s date and context but focuses more on editorial choice and requests to photograph Melania [3]. Available sources consistently attribute the images to Verglas; no provided source names a different principal photographer for the 2000 GQ jet shoot [1] [2] [5].
6. Legal and reuse issues noted by photographers
Verglas has described dealing with reuse of his images—reporting mentions an unauthorized use of one of his images by a political campaign during 2016 and his decision not to sue—demonstrating that the photographer retained both authorship and some control over how the images were handled publicly [2].
7. Context on Melania’s modeling career and public statements
Profiles and Melania’s own public statements referenced in later years framed the GQ shoot as one episode in a broader modeling career that included work with several prominent photographers; her later defenses of her modeling work are noted in summaries of her biography and comments she made on social media [6] [2].
8. Limits of the available reporting
Provided sources consistently identify Antoine Verglas as the photographer, but they do not—for example—publish full contractual details, model releases or the magazine’s internal assignment memo; those documents are not found in the current reporting (available sources do not mention full contract or release documents) [1] [3]. Similarly, while multiple accounts agree on Verglas’s role, the exact publication month appears in different places as January or March 2000 in the available snippets [3] [5].
9. Why this attribution matters and potential agendas
Attributing the images to Verglas matters for questions of copyright, reuse and provenance: fashion outlets and photographers have an interest in defending authorship and licensing, while political actors have used or circulated the images for messaging—an implicit clash between commercial/photojournalistic control and political utility is visible in the reporting [2] [1] [3].
10. Bottom line for readers
Based on the documents and reporting provided, French photographer Antoine Verglas is the credited photographer for Melania Trump’s 2000 GQ photo shoot aboard Donald Trump’s jet; multiple fashion and news outlets repeat this attribution and quote Verglas on the shoot’s concept and handling [1] [2]. If you want primary-source confirmation (e.g., credits on the physical magazine or GQ’s masthead for that issue), those archival pages are referenced by sellers and archives but the digitized primary page credits themselves are not reproduced in the available snippets here [7] [8].