Obama Photographer Pete Souza Shares Intimate Perspective of Presidency With Lehigh Community

The first time President Barack Obama traveled to the United Nations in 2009, he ended up with just over an hour of free time. He was getting “antsy,” according to Pete Souza, and wondered if there was a nearby gym to play basketball.

The Secret Service was able to gain access to a gym across the street, and Obama played one-on-one with his personal aide Reggie Love, who is 20 years younger, a few inches taller and a former member of Duke University’s 2001 National Championship basketball team.

Obama held his own, even though he hadn’t even started for his high school basketball team, and at one point, blocked one of Love’s shots. When Obama, drenched in sweat, retreated from the court, Souza said, he walked right over to his chief official photographer. “Did you get that block?” he asked Souza proudly.

Souza did. Obama asked him to make it a “jumbo,” the term used for photos that are enlarged, hung on the walls of the lower floor of the West Wing and periodically switched out—a tradition since at least the Nixon Administration.

It was one of the many tales Souza, chief official White House photographer for Obama, relayed Thursday night inside a packed Baker Hall at Lehigh’s Zoellner Arts Center. Using both words and photographs, he gave insight into Obama’s presidency.

The best-selling author, speaker and freelance photographer, who was also a White House photographer for President Ronald Reagan, spoke for 90 minutes on “Obama: An Intimate Portrait,” and took questions from audience members for another 25 minutes. Over 650 tickets were reserved for the free talk supported by Friends of the Lehigh Libraries.

Souza spent the first 15 minutes of his lecture detailing Obama’s departure from the White House on the day of President Donald Trump’s inauguration. His remarks followed the theme of his newest book “Shade: A Tale of Two Presidents” and many of his Instagram posts to his more than 2.1 million followers.

The remainder of his presentation focused on Obama, showing the private and public sides of the 44th President of the United States, starting with Obama’s inauguration.

“My goal was to create the best photographic archive that had ever been done on a president,” Souza said. “I wanted to make lasting images for history. So I was looking for all of these little behind-the-scenes moments.”

One of many photos displayed throughout the night that showed those private moments flashed on the screen at that moment. Souza had captured Obama and his wife, Michelle, heads touching, in a freight elevator traveling from one inaugural ball to another. In the photo, the First Lady is holding up the bottom of her dress up from the elevator floor, with Obama’s tuxedo jacket over her shoulders, as Secret Service members in the background attempt to give the couple as much privacy as possible.

When Souza received the call offering him the job a few weeks before Obama’s 2009 inauguration, he said he had one condition: access. As someone who worked for the Chicago Tribune, freelanced for National Geographic and worked in the Reagan White House, he saw himself as a seasoned photographer and one who knew how the job should be done. To do the job correctly, he said, he needed total access.

“When Inauguration Day rolled around…the main thing I had in the back of my head was to make authentic photographs,” Souza said. “To think about the mood, the emotion and the context. To be ready for the fleeting behind-the-scenes moments from both big historic events and really everyday situations.”

Souza showed images that highlighted a range of Obama’s emotionst. He divided the presentation into a number of sections, including Family, Interactions, The bin Laden Raid, The Worst Day, #ObamaAndKids and Election Week 2016, among other topics.

While discussing images that showed the weight on Obama’s shoulders during his presidency—a close up of Obama contemplating his next move during the financial crisis, a day’s worth of photos chronicling the Osama bin Laden raid and the emotional toll of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting—Souza made sure to balance his presentation between serious and more lighthearted moments. One photo was taken from behind the Easter Bunny and Obama, with the Washington Monument in between them.

“[Obama] said, ‘Look at that, the two most famous sets of ears in Washington,’” Souza said to laughter from the audience.

He also showed a photo that revealed “Obama the prankster.” After an event at the University of Texas and while walking back to the motorcade through the women’s volleyball locker room, White House trip director Marvin Nicholson jumped on a scale, as he was trying to lose weight and was in the midst of doing P90X. Souza’s image captured Obama, unbeknownst to Nicholson, stepping on the scale with more and more force as Nicholson adjusts the scale to check his weight.

Many of the photos Souza discussed in the “Family” portion of his talk included Obama’s daughters Malia and Sasha. One, taken during 2010’s Snowmageddon on the White House lawn, when Obama played with his daughters and made snow angels, is still the lock screen on Obama’s iPad today, according to Souza.