Ann Arbor exhibit offers rare peek behind the White House curtain, with photographer Pete Souza

Before an audience member can finish asking “if you were asked to do this job again…,” Pete Souza is barking “NO” into the microphone with the force of a man accustomed to wrangling a crowd.
 
The audience erupts into laughter and Souza, softening, says, “I just could not do this job again.”

The job in question? Chief Official White House Photographer and Director of the White House photo office under former President Barack Obama — for both terms.

Natalia Holtzman
 
On Sunday, Sept. 29, the Ann Arbor Art Center (A2AC) hosted a VIP Meet-and-Greet with Pete Souza to coincide with the exhibition "Obama: An Intimate Portrait", featuring 50 photographs personally chosen by Souza — photos of great tenderness and humor as well as tension. They show both the glamor of state dinners and the quiet mundanities of everyday moments between Obama and his family.
 
In one, Obama eats carrot sticks with Alicia Keys while Bono plays “Norwegian Wood” on guitar.
 
In another deeply moving scene from the Oval Office, Obama bends down as a Black child reaches his hand up, in awe that the then-president’s hair is the same texture as his own.
 
Pete SouzaSouza used to start work at around 7 a.m. or 8 a.m. and often wouldn’t get home until midnight.
 
“I took one sick day in eight years,” he tells his audience. “I had to undergo a colonoscopy.”
 
Later, asked about the relentless pace of work, Souza speaks about Obama asking “Can you imagine what [toll] that took on him?”

“All I was doing was making photographs.”

Pete Souza / The Ann Arbor Art Center"Obama: An Intimate Portrait" by Pete Souza
 
Souza’s empathy and affection for Obama is often evident in his photographs.
 
Asked whether that affection might have interfered with his work as a documentarian, Souza tells Concentrate that, instead, it assisted his work.

“In many ways, if I did not have that kind of relationship with [Obama], I would not have been allowed in the room.” 
 
Souza, who also served as Chief White House Photographer under former President Ronald Reagan, also points out that under former President Donald Trump’s presidency the White House photographer Shealah Craighead "did not have…behind-the-scenes access,” and many events therefore went undocumented in a visual sense.
 
“Even on Jan. 6, there’s no pictures of him,” Souza tells Concentrate. “How’s that possible?”

Pete Souza / The Ann Arbor Art Center"Obama: An Intimate Portrait" by Pete Souza
 
One of the most iconic photographs included in the A2AC’s exhibition is one taken in the Situation Room on the day Osama bin Laden was killed. It shows Obama, then-Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, and others, and is notable for the extraordinary tension and gravity in the room. Clinton can be seen holding her hand over her face.

“He actually has the bird’s-eye-view of history,” says U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, who stopped by the exhibit event.
 
During the 40 minutes that his presence in the room was tolerated, Souza says, he only took 120 photographs.
 
“Maybe that sounds like a lot,” he tells his audience at the A2AC — but in so many of the photos, his subjects might have been moving or blinking; he had to wait for their expressions to align.
 
“I felt the tension and anxiety,” Souza says, sharing that he wanted the photo to reflect that atmosphere.