Interview: Pete Souza
As photographer to two presidents, Pete Souza knows what goes on inside the White House better than most. He tells Keith Wilson why it’s no ordinary job, and what he thinks of the present occupant…
Former official photographer to Obama
With the publication of his new book, Shade: A Tale of Two Presidents,
Pete Souza makes it abundantly clear that he’s not a fan of the Trump presidency. The book, which debuted at number one on The New York Times’ bestseller list, is a study in Presidential contrasts and tells the tale of the Obama and Trump administrations through a series of visual juxtapositions.
These contrasts became starkly apparent soon after Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, when Pete began using his Instagram account to post photos of Obama as a riposte to Trump’s latest decisions. For example, Trump’s controversial early executive order to ban immigration from mostly Muslim nations was countered by Souza’s photograph of a smiling Obama meeting a refugee girl.
The Instagram posts continued daily and have culminated in the new book, which features over a hundred of Souza’s witty photos of President Obama paired with Trump’s controversial tweets and quotes from the first 500 days of his office. Since the publication of Shade, Souza has been
in demand up and down the land for TV appearances and interviews…
What motivated you to do this?
As I tell people, if any other person had been elected president, I wouldn’t be doing this. Having worked for both President Obama and President Reagan, I think we now have someone as president who disrespects the office of the presidency by the way he disrespects other people. I have this unique voice on Instagram, and I felt it was my civic duty to participate in the discussion.
Did you have an inkling when Trump was running for the United States presidency that you might end up doing something like this?
Not at all – mostly because in no way did I feel that he would win the election. I didn’t think it was possible, so the thought didn’t enter my brain until after the inauguration.
That whole day – Obama’s last day, Trump’s first day – was such a surreal historical moment. As the day played out, I got more and more concerned about the damage this guy would do to our country.
Opposite top: President Barack Obama and his daughters, Sasha and Malia, play in the snowstorm at the White House, 2010.
Opposite bottom: President Obama participates in a series of meetings in the Situation Room of the White House to discuss the mission against Osama bin Laden, 2011. “N o matter who the photographer and the president is, every picture ends up in what our country calls the National Archives”
It sounds like a strange day. Was it also your last day as Obama’s photographer?
On the books, I was done at noon, on 20 January, but the reality is that I continued to photograph until I flew with him to Palm Springs. In our country, the outgoing president can use Air Force One for one last time; he and Michelle flew over to California, so I accompanied him on that trip and saw him off the plane. I stayed on the plane and flew back to Washington DC.
You had an extraordinary insight into both the Obama and Reagan presidencies. How did they differ in the way they reacted to you, and how they used photography?
It was a completely different era in the Reagan days back in the 1980s. I was a young man, and Reagan was in his 70s. I wasn’t the chief photographer, so I didn’t have as much access as I did with President Obama. With Reagan we shot all film, which presents its own issues, and with President Obama it was all digital.
In terms of using photography, I think the Reagan people used my photography in a similar way to President Obama – but with one stark difference, and that is President Obama happened to be president when social media exploded. The Obama administration made more present-day use of my photography than the Reagan administration did, just because of social media more than anything.
Does that mean that you had more freedom in the Obama White House?
I had already known Barack Obama for four years. My getting access to essentially everything he did was because he understood the value of creating a visual archive for history, trusting me enough to allow me to be included in all of the sensitive meetings.
Speaking of sensitive meetings, one of your most memorable photographs is of the Situation Room during the raid to capture Osama Bin Laden. Was that the most difficult situation you had photographed?
Difficult? Not really. But I was never, before or after, in a situation where there was as much tension or anxiety. It was very pervasive.
Some of your most poignant pictures are the shots that you took during President Reagan’s funeral. What was that like to cover – not just as a photographer, but as someone who knew Ronald Reagan and his family?
I was honoured that Mrs Reagan asked me to cover the funeral. It was a little strange to go to a funeral for someone that you knew really well, not to be a participant, but the person documenting that funeral.
I guess it was an emotional experience, because I was trying to make really good pictures but a lot of memories came back. I’d left the Reagan White House in January of 1989 and this was 2004; 15 years had passed since I had been in his presence every day.
Is the primary role of the White House photographer to be a fly on the wall?
The job of official White House photographer or chief White House photographer is to visually document the presidency for history. It depends on the relationship between the president and his or her photographer, and how much access they’re going to get and what that really means.
So no matter who the photographer is and who the president is, every picture ends up going into what our country calls the National Archives. They document and archive these photographs in perpetuity.
For example, if you were to go right now to the Reagan Library website, you would see every single image I ever shot while I was in the Reagan White House. All the photographs from the Obama administration are already in the National Archives.
How many pictures did you take during the Obama presidency?
I shot almost two million photos. I guess a very small percentage of them were made public at the time, but there are probably 1.8 million that haven’t been made public yet.
Was there ever a time when you weren’t photographing in the White House,
“I shot almost two million photos. I guess a very small percentage of them were made public at the time, but there are probably 1.8 million that haven’t been”
and were there any historic moments that you missed?
No. I was actually there all of the time. I was off sick only one day in eight years and I didn’t take any vacation for the first five years. The last three years I took one week vacation each year. I still went with Obama on vacation, too, because when you’re president something could happen when you’re on vacation. So I thought if I was going to take a vacation, it would be better to do it when he was on vacation too.
That’s what I did for the last three years. I didn’t really miss any big events, mostly because I was there. I made the decision early on that if I’m going to document for history, you can’t say when history is going to take place all the time. In those three weeks of vacation I missed probably a couple of interesting pictures, but they weren’t history‑making pictures.
Have you given any advice to the current chief White House photographer?
Shealah Craighead, Trump’s photographer, was hired very late in the process, just before the inauguration, so I had one conversation with her on the phone. It was mostly about logistical things and I offered my help, but I never heard back from her. I was willing to give her advice, but I wasn’t really asked for it.
Do you know if Donald Trump really likes the camera as much as we think?
I think he loves the camera, and his whole presidency is about being a reality show. He likes it when all the cameras come into the room, for meetings and stuff like that.
When did you first meet Obama, and what made you decide to follow him when he ran for the White House?
I happened to be working for The Chicago
Tribune as its Washington DC photographer when Barack Obama was elected to the Senate in 2004. When he came to Washington, the Tribune decided to take an extensive look at his first year in the Senate. To do that I needed access to him – and because we were the ‘hometown’ newspaper, I got access that no-one else got.
Just through that, because you’re working in such close proximity to him, you get to know the guy a little bit, and he got to see how I worked. That first year continued into his second year in the Senate, where I continued to cover him for the Tribune. I think it was because of that relationship that when he was elected to the White House he asked me to become his official photographer.
Who did you draw your inspiration from when you took on the job? Who were your heroes and mentors?
For this job at the White House it was Yoichi Okamoto, LBJ’s (Lyndon Baines Johnson, the 36th US president) photographer. He was really the first official White House photographer to document a presidency for history. President Kennedy had two military photographers rotating, but they didn’t have access to everything. When LBJ took over after Kennedy was killed, he brought onboard this guy, Yoichi Okamoto, and gave him total access. For me, he was the guy who had always set the bar so high in terms of the role of official White House photographer, so that was my goal: to at least get the same kind of access to President Obama.
They’re completely different people, LBJ and President Obama, and my pictures reflect that difference, but for access and the art of photography, Okamoto was the guy that I looked up to.
You obviously got to know Obama very well as a person as well as a president. Are there two sides to him?
You know, I don’t think there are two sides to him. The one thing about being president is that it doesn’t change who you are, but magnifies who you are. We know what Donald Trump is like just by the way he behaves in public. President Obama... maybe he’s funnier and more disciplined than people realise. It’s not that he’s different, I just think that people didn’t get to see his humour like I did, or how disciplined he was about his work.
“T he Obama administration made more present-day use of my photography than Reagan did, because of social media”
What kit were you shooting with?
I used the Canon EOS 5D Mk II, then upgraded to the 5D Mk III when that came out. I would usually carry two cameras, one with a wideangle lens and one with a telephoto lens.
When I was inside the White House, I would walk around with a 35mm, 50mm and a 135mm lens, then occasionally use an 85mm or a 24mm. When Canon brought out the second version of its EF 24-70mm zoom, I found that lens to be really sharp so started using that a lot more. I would always have the 35mm lens with me, because some of the rooms in the White House were just lousy lighting. For example, the tense Situation Room photo was taken with the 35mm lens.
What about the Oval Office itself – is that a pleasant place to photograph?
During the day the Oval Office has flat light. During the winter and late fall, the sun is lower down on the horizon, and you get some direct sunlight coming straight into the Oval Office, which occasionally would give you some different kind of light. I didn’t like the Oval Office in the summer because the sun was so high and the leaves were on the trees, but then in the winter and late fall, the leaves have dropped off the trees and the sun is lower on the horizon, so you get a lot more interesting direct light coming into play.
Do you have one standout memory from the White House years?
Well, one standout memory is that I got married there! President Obama insisted that we host our wedding in the Rose Garden.
After everything you’ve done, where is your photography taking you now?
I got sidetracked by these two books and have spent most of my time on these books in some capacity, whether it was editing photos, working with the designer, speaking about the books, or book signings. 2019 will be the first real chance
I’ve had since Trump’s inauguration to shoot a lot. I’m really hoping to get out more and try new photography.