Presidential chronicler with a camera

No time to check lighting. Forget about fiddling with the lens, lining up the composition. Reflexes take over.

The photographic image snared by Pete Souza tickles the synapses, a behind-the-scenes moment of the most delightful and surprising kind.

There is President Obama — the leader of the blooming free world — moving the sofa back into place after a routine photo op in the Oval Office!

Doesn't the president have people to do that sort of thing? Don't his people have people who have people who could have handled that little chore?

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 photogenic 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 — when just about everyone is shooed away.

In the pressurised atmosphere of the presidential bubble, Souza gets to disappear into the molecules, hoovering 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, a 54-year-old with dark eyes, a prominent nose and thick features.

On inauguration night, Obama shows off his party tuxedo in a White House hallway for the kids, Sasha and Malia. Souza's there. Click.

POTUS gives the touchdown sign while watching the Super Bowl in the White House. Click.
Slouching in the Oval. Click. Click.

The momentous and the numbingly dull. It is all there in Souza's eye, all there in his Canon 5D Mark II camera.

Five hundred photos in one day? That is a light day. Sometimes, it is 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.''

In 2004, Souza was working in Washington 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, which once served as a barbershop.

On the day Obama was inaugurated as Illinois's junior senator, Souza captured an image of him squatting to talk with his daughter Malia, then 6.

The shot is an intimate family moment. Another photograph shows his younger daughter, Sasha, 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.

“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 recognisable human beings on Earth.

In another, Obama walks unrecognised on a Moscow street. It is one of Souza's favourites. “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 recently, 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 website now features a huge rotating display of photos by Souza and the other photographers on his staff.

They are part of historic moments great and small. A small first: Souza's official presidential portrait of Obama is the first to be taken with a digital camera.

Souza is an exceedingly popular and respected figure in Washington's tight-knit photography circles.

During a brief interview one recent morning, he is flipping through photographs.

He especially likes an inauguration night image of the president nuzzling first lady Michelle Obama in an elevator while secret service agents awkwardly try to avert their eyes.

Obama has draped his tuxedo jacket over her shoulders and they are looking deeply 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.''

There are more photos on the desk, more moments for reminiscing. But Souza's eyes keep wandering to the clock.

He rises and makes his apologies. He has got to go, Souza says. The president is about to make a phone call.