Photographing the President w/ Pete Souza
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 27 November 2023
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As the person responsible for documenting the Obama Administration, Pete Souza spent more time with Barack Obama than almost anyone else, which left him with some deep in sights on Obama and the office of the Presidency. In this episode, Pete joins Bob for a conversation about his work as Chief Official White House Photographer, the state of American politics, and the power of photography. Pete's most recent book, Shade: A Tale of Two Presidents (Little, Brown, & Co, 2018) uses photography to contrast the stark differences between the Presidency of Barack Obama and that of Donald Trump.
If you enjoy this conversation, make sure to check out Pete's other appearances on the show in episodes #251 & #151.
This is a rebroadcast of RTN #131, which originally aired on June 3, 2019. The original episode was edited by Gary Fletcher and Bob Crawford; this rebroadcast was edited by Ben Sawyer.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Ben Sawyer and this is the road to now. |
| 0:09.5 | Today we are sharing an incredible conversation with the legendary photographer Pete Sousa, |
| 0:15.9 | a presidential photographer for Barack Obama, before that for Ronald Reagan. |
| 0:20.7 | His life is fascinating. To be a photographer |
| 0:23.0 | and do the job he does, you have incredible access to the life of presidents. You see things |
| 0:29.6 | nobody else sees. And ultimately, you leave behind the visual record through photographs of that |
| 0:35.8 | time in our nation's history. This conversation is from 2019, |
| 0:40.7 | and I remember Bob saying Pete Sousa agreed to be on the show. We couldn't work it out for me to be |
| 0:45.4 | there. I was kind of jealous. I didn't get to be a part of it, but to go to the show, you know? |
| 0:50.2 | Well, it turns out Pete has been on our show multiple times now. I know he was on the show with our |
| 0:56.0 | live show in 2019 in Chicago. And then he came on last year to talk about his new book. |
| 1:01.0 | The guy never stops being a delight to speak to. So it was fun to go back and listen to this |
| 1:05.8 | original conversation. And I'll just say right now, Bob's questions on this are on point. |
| 1:30.0 | I listen to the whole thing back through and And it was, I had to text him and tell him how good this was. So we hope you guys enjoy it. We took a week off for Thanksgiving. We'll be back with a new episode next week. And we hope you guys had as good of a Thanksgiving as we did. Patrons, you keep us going. Thank you so much. |
| 1:37.7 | Now enjoy the wonderful Pete Sousa. Pete Sousa, welcome to The Road to Now. Thanks for having me on, |
| 1:48.3 | Bob. Pete, you were President Obama's photographer for eight years. So many questions, but I think I need to start with this one. How did you get to know President Obama and become the photographer for his presidency? |
| 1:56.2 | I mean, it's funny, the turns that you take in life and where they lead. |
| 2:01.6 | I happen to take a job in 1998 with the Chicago Tribune, based in D.C. as their national |
| 2:08.6 | international photographer. |
| 2:10.6 | And then in 2004, a state senator named Barack Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate, and we decided to do sort of a documentary look at his first year in the Senate. |
| 2:23.3 | He was trying to keep a little profile, but because we were kind of the hometown newspaper, |
| 2:28.3 | he gave me incredible access. |
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