A new book collects the acclaimed photojournalist’s images of everything from conflict zones to Donald Trump’s inner circle. He describes how his pursuit of truth even led to an unsettling encounter with the disgraced financier
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t didn’t come as a great shock to Christopher Anderson to find out that his name was in the Epstein files. In 2015, he was assigned by New York magazine to photograph the American financier for a planned profile interview by the American journalist Michael Wolff.
“I didn’t know who Jeffrey Epstein was at all,” says Anderson. He admits that he often didn’t research the people he was photographing, and went into the job unaware that Epstein was a child sex offender who had been convicted in 2008 for soliciting prostitution from a minor, and had served 13 months in a Palm Beach County jail in Florida. “What I knew was that this guy is a rich and powerful man connected to rich and powerful men.”
Epstein demanded an advance meeting, “to suss me out”, Anderson believes, and to negotiate buying the rights to the pictures for $20,000 (£15,000). Anderson remembers “quite an unnerving person. He played with the theatrics of intimidation. He wanted to impress upon me that he was somebody powerful that I wouldn’t want to cross.”
