Capturing history in the making

Pete Souza, former White House photographer for two US Presidents, in his first Indian visit, opens up to Srivathsan Nadadhur on his equation with the Obamas and what amuses him about modern-day photography.

It’s the first time that Pete Souza, photojournalist and former Chief Official White House Photographer for two US Presidents Barrack Obama and Ronald Reagan, has stepped afoot in India. Unsurprisingly, he’s overwhelmed by what he’s seeing. His love for historicity, colours, and culture in the country is evident in his series of Instagram posts about his city tour over a couple of days. In Hyderabad to deliver a keynote talk for the fourth edition of the annual PEP Photo Summit 2019, the photographer’s hard-pressed for time and feels slightly sleep-deprived as we catch up for a candid chat. Yet he manages to put up a smile to say, “I feel a lot better today than yesterday, I had caught some reasonable sleep.”

Our conversation veers onto the easy access to photography across a wide range of devices and how this has made lives harder for several professional photographers who feel the pinch about standing tall from the rest. Pete believes that a quality photographer can still find a way to carve his niche.”To make better pictures than other people, it’s important to capture the little moments and weave in a bit of artistry. Some are able to do it with a smartphone and some don’t do it right even with a high-end camera device.” A lot about photography isn’t the tool, he feels. “Whether you use a fancy digital camera or a smartphone, you can take equally bad or good photographs with them. It’s more than the camera, it’s about the person doing the picture-taking and thinking and how he/she frames the image.”

Singular focus

Being the official White House Photographer made him the apple of everyone’s eye on social media, but he was particular about not taking this to his head. “I didn’t look at the job any differently because there was a lot of social media traction. However, with time, I knew what differentiated a viral image from the other ones. The formula doesn’t work always though,” he smiles. The basic transition that he had to undergo from being a regular photojournalist to working officially with the US president was his singular focus on one subject, as opposed to the variety of subjects he could choose in a regular newspaper job. “The role was challenging, there are no two things about it,” Pete states.

“It’s not easy when you have only one subject because all days are not exciting. Let’s just face it! But you still have to be ready as a photographer knowing that any particular day could become historic. As you drive by the White House, you may feel there’s nothing on the schedule for the day, but you need to have a curious pair of eyes to spot history in the making,” the photographer quips. His rapport with the Obamas was evident through his journey at the White House. Comparing Obama to the current president, he finds, “Obama worked hard at presenting facts, involved himself in discussions before taking a decision. It felt like there were a lot of good people trying to do the right thing for the American people.”

Pete Souza’s picture from the White House archives.

Different perspective

His take on the Obama term also came through in a book form, Obama: An Intimate portrait, a bestseller when it debuted at bookstores. “I tried to show people what Obama went through in eight years, both the historic and the little moments. It was an attempt to show how Obama is, as a person, and his contrasting approach to the other US presidents,” the man, who’s also lent his voice to Brandi Carlile’s song Hold out your hand, says.

An aspect that consistently amuses Pete is the humongous number of hashtags and wordage associated with every image posted on social media. However, he doesn’t rule out the need for some context to a few photographs through words.

“It’s necessary sometimes to give the backstory or the front story of the images. I think it completes the image in a lot of ways. Surprisingly enough, I still can’t come to terms with hashtags. I just can’t get why people put 20 hashtags to one picture.”

He points a finger towards his Instagram posts and says that there is hardly one hashtag to his image at best, before being reminded that it’s dinner-time for the 64-year old.