Candid camera: Staff photographer captures Obama
WASHINGTON – No time to check lighting. Forget about fiddling with the lens, lining up the composition.
Reflexes take over.
Point. Click.
Nailed it.
The photographic image snared by Pete Souza tickles the synapses, a behind-the-scenes moment of the most delightful kind. There is President Obama – the leader of the bloomin’ free world, for goodness’ sake – moving the sofa back into place after a routine photo op in the Oval Office!
Even Souza – an “old warhorse” of political photography, as former Time photographer Dirck Halstead describes him – can’t believe it.
“I was not expecting that,” says Souza, who became the Obama White House’s official photographer in January, two decades after handling those duties for another Oval Office occupant, Ronald Reagan. “The president of the United States doesn’t move furniture back in place!”
Ah, but he does. Souza’s picture tells us so.
Souza is the photographer who gets to stay in the room when all the other photogs are shooed away. In the pressurized atmosphere of the presidential bubble, Souza gets to disappear into the molecules, covering moments the rest of us could only dream of seeing.
“I don’t know if ‘fly on the wall’ is too much of a cliché,” says Souza, 54.
So, on inauguration night, Obama shows off his party tux in a White House hallway for the first kids, Sasha and Malia. Souza’s there.
Click.
The president nuzzles the first lady in a service elevator between inauguration balls.
Click.
Slouching in the Oval.
Click. Click. Click.
The momentous and the numbingly dull. It’s all there in Souza’s eye, all there in his Canon 5D Mark II camera. Five hundred photos in one day? That’s a light day. Sometimes, it’s 1,000 or 1,500, so many photos that Souza can only guess at the exact tallies.
How many different ways can you photograph the same man talking on the same phone? Souza knows. He shoots nearly all phone calls the president makes to other world leaders, just in case one of those calls is the call. A moment that shapes history.
“You need to be there,” Souza says, “all the time.”
Official White House photographers are not journalists. They work for the president, and the White House press office decides which of their images will be released to the public. Eventually, though, all the photographs make their way to the National Archives and to presidential libraries.
In 2004, Souza was working in Washington as a photographer for the Chicago Tribune. A colleague, Jeff Zeleny – now a political writer for the New York Times – asked him to take photographs for an ambitious project documenting Obama’s first year as senator.
Souza hadn’t seen the now-legendary speech at the Democratic National Convention that launched Obama. But he quickly figured out that “there was just something special about this guy that I hadn’t seen in a lot of other politicians,” he says one recent morning in his West Wing office.
On the day Obama was inaugurated as Illinois’ junior U.S. senator, Souza captured an image of him squatting to talk with his daughter Malia, then 6. The shot exudes warmth, an intimate family moment. Another photograph shows his younger daughter, Sasha, hamming it up during the swearing-in ceremony. Days later, Souza says, Obama picked him out of a crowd and complimented him.
The marquee shot from Souza’s journalistic coverage of Obama may be one that shows him bounding up the stairs of the Capitol. Obama, seen from behind, is in motion, a kinetic metaphor of the young, vibrant politician in his ascendance.
“It doesn’t get any better than that image,” says Bill Luster, a photographer at the Louisville Courier-Journal who has befriended Souza on frequent trips to Washington. “It’s a simple picture. His pictures are very simple in terms of composition. At the same time, they are complex in terms of content.”
Time and distance, though, elevate other photos in Souza’s Obama portfolio, which have been compiled for a book published last summer: “The Rise of Barack Obama.”
In one, Obama sits with his feet on the desk in a sparse, temporary office he occupied after entering the Senate – nothing about the image hints that this man is soon to become among the most recognizable human beings on Earth. In another, Obama walks unrecognized on a Moscow street. It is one of Souza’s favorites.
“This is a picture,” Souza says, “that is never going to be taken again.”
When the White House called, Souza had left day-to-day picture taking for a job teaching photojournalism at Ohio University. Before saying yes, he says, he wanted to make sure that he and Obama agreed that his focus would be documenting the presidency for history’s sake. It is a goal, Souza says, that Obama buys into.
“I was a little surprised. A lot of people were surprised,” Souza’s friend, Halstead, says of his decision. “Pete was working in the private sector for so long that he may have forgotten how difficult it is; ... you have to be available around the clock.”
You also become a public figure. When Obama addressed Congress on Feb. 24, there was Souza over his right shoulder, clicking away. Because of the Internet, Souza may have a wider audience for his photos than any White House photographer in history. The White House Web site has been revamped from the Bush days and now features a huge rotating display of photos by Souza and the other photographers on his staff.
Souza especially likes an inauguration night image of the president nuzzling first lady Michelle Obama in a freight elevator while Secret Service agents awkwardly try to avert their eyes. Obama has draped his jacket over her shoulders, and they are looking into each other’s eyes. No other photograph hangs on Souza’s office wall – the image reflects in the old barbershop mirror behind his desk.
“It tells a complete story,” Souza says of the photograph. “You know exactly what’s going on.”
“It was Sept. 5, 2008, and it happened at home. I was at my sink doing my dishes,” says Nicole Kimmet, 30, as she begins her story. In broad daylight, someone came up behind her and whacked her on the back of her head.