Pete Souza | |
---|---|
Chief Official White House Photographer | |
In office June 1983 –January 20, 1989 | |
President | Ronald Reagan |
Preceded by | Michael Evans |
Succeeded by | David Valdez |
In office January 20,2009 –January 20,2017 | |
President | Barack Obama |
Preceded by | Eric Draper |
Succeeded by | Shealah Craighead |
Personal details | |
Born | Peter Joseph Souza December 31,1954 New Bedford,Massachusetts,U.S. |
Spouse | Patti Lease (m. 2013) |
Education | Boston University (BS) Kansas State University (MS) |
Website | PeteSouza.com |
Peter Joseph Souza [2] (born December 31, 1954) [3] [4] is an American photojournalist, the former chief official White House photographer for Presidents of the United States Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama and the former director of the White House Photography Office. [5] He was a photographer with The Chicago Tribune , stationed at the Washington, D.C., bureau from 1998 to 2007; during this period, he also followed the rise of then-Senator Obama to the presidency. [6] [7]
Souza was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts and grew up in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts, [8] the son of a nurse and a boat mechanic. [9] He is of Portuguese ancestry; both sets of his grandparents emigrated from the Azores. [10]
Souza graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in public communication from Boston University and a master's degree in journalism and mass communication from Kansas State University. [7] [8]
Souza started his career in the 1970s in Kansas at the Chanute Tribune and the Hutchinson News . [11] In the early 1980s, he was a photographer for the Chicago Sun-Times .
He served as an official White House photographer for President Ronald Reagan [12] from June 1983 until 1989. He was also the official photographer for the funeral services of Ronald Reagan in 2004. [8]
At the end of the Reagan administration, Souza continued to be based in Washington, D.C. Between 1998 and 2007, he was a photographer for the Chicago Tribune Washington, D.C., bureau. [7] Souza has also worked as a freelancer for National Geographic and Life magazines. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he was among the first journalists to cover the war in Afghanistan and the fall of Kabul.
In 2004, Jeff Zeleny, now a political correspondent for CNN, asked Souza to take photographs for a project documenting Barack Obama's first year as a U.S. senator. [13]
Souza covered Obama's arrival to the Senate in 2005 and met him for the first time on Obama's first day in the Senate. He documented Obama's time in the Senate, following him on many foreign trips, including those to Kenya, South Africa, and Russia. In the process, he not only became close to Senator Obama, but ended up following his rise to the presidency. [6] In July 2008, Souza published a bestseller photo-book The Rise of Barack Obama, featuring photographs between 2005 and 2008. [14]
Souza was an assistant professor of photojournalism at Ohio University's School of Visual Communication. [7] After the November 2008 election, he was asked to become the official White House photographer for the second time for the new President-elect Obama. [13] [15] On January 14, 2009, the new presidential portrait was released; it is the first time that an official presidential portrait was taken with a digital camera. [16] A week later, Souza was present at the inauguration and the following day he was the only photographer present for Obama's second swearing-in on Obama's first workday in the Oval Office. [13]
In May 2009, Souza began using Flickr as an official conduit for releasing White House photos. The photos were initially posted with a Creative Commons Attribution license which required that the original photographers be credited. Flickr later created a new license which identified them as "United States Government Work" which does not carry any copyright restrictions. [17] [18]
In 2010, National Geographic produced a program about Souza titled The President's Photographer, which featured Souza as the main subject while also covering the previous White House photographers. [6]
Souza's photograph taken at 4:05 pm on May 1, 2011, in the Situation Room during the raid on Osama bin Laden, featuring Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and others, quickly became an iconic image. [19] It also became one of the most viewed images on Flickr. [20] Souza's 2009 image of a five-year-old child, Jacob Philadelphia, touching Obama's head has also become iconic. Jacob asked if Obama's hair was similar to his and the image has become symbolic of the African American struggle for civil rights. [21]
As the official White House photographer, Souza traveled with the president to document each meeting, trip and encounter for historical records. Along with his staff, Souza produced up to 20,000 pictures a week. [6] Souza's team included David Lienemann, the official photographer for Joe Biden, [22] and Lawrence Jackson (later the official photographer for Vice President Kamala Harris). [23]
In November 2011, Souza was included on The New Republic 's list of Washington's most-powerful, least-famous people. [24]
In October 2013, Souza and his wife, Patti Lease, became the 18th couple to get married at the White House.
As well as using very high end cameras for his presidential photography, Souza occasionally took square shots on his iPhone. [25] [26]
In 2017, Souza received a book deal from Little, Brown and Company to publish a book of photos from his tenure as White House photographer titled Obama: An Intimate Portrait: The Historic Presidency in Photographs. [27]
Upon Donald Trump's inauguration as president in 2017, Souza began sharing pictures of Obama on his Instagram account, often as critical commentary on the new administration. In April 2017, he had over one million Instagram followers, and reached two million followers in August 2018 as he continued to critique the Trump presidency through contrasting photographs of Obama. [28] In 2018, he announced the release of a new book titled Shade: A Tale of Two Presidents , juxtaposing the Obama and Trump administrations. [29]
In late 2019, Pete Souza and his family moved to Madison, Wisconsin. [30]
Souza's work during and after the Obama administration is also the subject of the 2020 documentary The Way I See It. [31]
In January 2021, Souza gave advice to Adam Schultz, the incoming Chief Official White House Photographer for President Joe Biden. He also noted that the photographer for outgoing President Trump, Shealah Craighead, had posted "very few behind the scenes pictures" to Flickr during her tenure. [32]
In 2021 Souza was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum. [33]
A Reagan Democrat is a traditionally Democratic voter in the United States, referring to working class residents who supported Republican presidential candidates Ronald Reagan in the 1980 and/or the 1984 presidential elections, and/or George H. W. Bush during the 1988 presidential election. The term Reagan Democrat remains part of the lexicon in American political jargon because of Reagan's continued widespread popularity among a large segment of the electorate.
The Oval Office is the formal working space of the president of the United States. Part of the Executive Office of the President of the United States, it is in the West Wing of the White House, in Washington, D.C.
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Counselor to the President is a title used by high-ranking political advisors to the president of the United States and senior members of the White House Office.
Beginning with painter Gilbert Stuart's portrait of George Washington, it has been tradition for the president of the United States to have an official portrait taken during their time in office, most commonly an oil painting. This tradition has continued to modern times, although since the adoption of photography as a widely used and reliable technology, the official portrait may also be a photograph.
The weekly address of the president of the United States is the weekly speech by the president of the United States to the nation. Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first U.S. president to deliver such radio addresses. Ronald Reagan revived the practice of delivering a weekly Saturday radio broadcast in 1982, and his successors all continued the practice until Donald Trump ceased doing so seventeen months into his term.
The White House Office of Public Engagement (OPE) is a unit of the White House Office within the Executive Office of the President of the United States. Under the administration of President Barack Obama, it combined oversight of OPE and the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs (IGA) under the Office of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs (OPE-IGA). President Donald Trump restored the prior name of the Office of Public Liaison (OPL) and re-separated IGA. President Joe Biden changed the name back to OPE but kept IGA separate in his administration.
The Reagan era or the Age of Reagan is a periodization of recent American history used by historians and political observers to emphasize that the conservative "Reagan Revolution" led by President Ronald Reagan in domestic and foreign policy had a lasting impact. It overlaps with what political scientists call the Sixth Party System. Definitions of the Reagan era universally include the 1980s, while more extensive definitions may also include the late 1970s, the 1990s, and even the 2000s. In his 2008 book, The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974–2008, historian and journalist Sean Wilentz argues that Reagan dominated this stretch of American history in the same way that Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal legacy dominated the four decades that preceded it.
An Oval Office address is a type of speech made by the president of the United States, usually in the Oval Office at the White House. It is considered among the most solemn settings for an address made by a leader, and is most often delivered to announce a major new policy initiative, on the occasion of a leader's departure from office, or during times of national emergency.
Situation Room is a photograph taken by Pete Souza, Chief Official White House Photographer, at 4:05 p.m. on May 1, 2011. The photograph shows U.S. president Barack Obama and his national security team in the White House Situation Room receiving live updates from Operation Neptune Spear, which led to the killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
The official White House photographer is a senior position appointed by the president of the United States to cover the president's official day-to-day duties. There have been twelve official White House photographers. Since the beginning of the presidency of Joe Biden, the position has been occupied by Adam Schultz.
The White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs (IGA) is a unit of the White House Office, within the Executive Office of the President. It serves as the primary liaison between the White House and state, county (or county-equivalent), local, and tribal governments. The office focuses on building new and maintaining current relationships with governors, tribal leaders, mayors, state legislators, and county executives. The Office of Intergovernmental Affairs works with federal agencies and departments to ensure appropriate coordination between state, local, and tribal governments and the federal government. The Director of Intergovernmental Affairs at the White House Office for the Biden administration was Julie Chavez Rodriguez until she resigned on May 16, 2023 to become Biden's Campaign Manager for his 2024 reelection bid. Tom Perez became Director on June 12, 2023.
On August 28, 2014, United States President Barack Obama held a live press conference in which he discussed the prospect of escalating the U.S. military response to the Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria. For the conference, he wore a tan suit, which at the time was unusual for Obama. It received considerable attention, with whether it was appropriate for the subject matter of terrorism being discussed in the media. The issue remained prominent for several days and was widely discussed, often humorously, on television talk shows.
Hair Like Mine is a 2009 photograph by Pete Souza of a five-year-old child, Jacob Philadelphia, touching the head of Barack Obama, then president of the United States. He invited Philadelphia to touch his hair after the boy asked whether Obama's hair was similar to his own afro-textured hair. Time called the image "iconic", and it was later described by First Lady Michelle Obama as symbolizing progress made in the African-American struggle for civil rights.
David Lienemann is an American photographer. He was the official White House photographer for Joe Biden during the eight years that he served as Vice President of the United States. In the course of his role, Lienemann took nearly one million photographs.
Lawrence Jackson is an American photographer and photojournalist. He is an official White House photographer, covering the vice presidency of Kamala Harris. He also served as an official White House photographer for the Obama administration. Before his work in government, he was a news photographer.
Some presidents of the United States have had a red call button in the Oval Office of the White House that could call aides. The earliest incarnation dates to 1881 or before, and the modern call button has been in a wooden box on the Resolute desk since at least the George W. Bush presidency (2001–2009).
like his former boss Pete Souza, David was granted unfettered access to Biden, which resulted in nearly a million compelling photos.
Pete Souza has been Barack Obama's chief White House photographer throughout the US president's two terms in office
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