Souza, Pete, 1954-

<p>Pete Souza is a best-selling author, speaker and freelance photographer based in Madison, Wisconsin. He is also Professor Emeritus of Visual Communication at Ohio University. Souza was the Chief Official White House Photographer for President Obama and the Director of the White House photo office.</p>

<p>His book, "Obama: An Intimate Portrait," was published by Little, Brown &amp; Company in 2017, and debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. It is one of the best-selling photography books of all time.</p>

<p>His latest book, "Shade: A Tale of Two Presidents," also debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list in October 2018. Shade is a portrait in Presidential contrasts, telling the tale of the Obama and Trump administrations through a series of visual juxtapositions. Here, more than one hundred of Souza's unforgettable images of President Obama deliver new power and meaning when framed by the tweets, news headlines, and quotes that defined the first 500 days of the Trump White House.</p>

<p>Previously Souza worked as an Assistant Professor of Photojournalism at Ohio University, the national photographer for the Chicago Tribune based in their Washington bureau, a freelancer for National Geographic and other publications, and Official White House Photographer for President Reagan.</p>

<p>His book, "The Rise of Barack Obama," was published in July 2008 and includes exclusive photographs of the Senator Obama's rise to power. The book was also on the New York Times bestseller list.</p>

<p>In addition to the national political scene, Souza has covered stories around the world. After 9/11, he was among the first journalists to cover the fall of Kabul, Afghanistan, after crossing the Hindu Kush mountains by horseback in three feet of snow. </p>

<p>Also while at the Tribune, Souza was part of the staff awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for explanatory reporting on the airline industry.</p>

<p>As a freelancer, Souza photographed two stories on assignment for National Geographic Magazine and three photo essays for Life Magazine. His photographs have also been published in many other magazines and newspapers around the world including on the covers of Life, Fortune, Newsweek, and U.S. News &amp; World Report.</p>


<p>In 1992, Souza produced and published "Unguarded Moments: Behind-the-Scenes Photographs of President Reagan," a coffee-table book based on his 5 1/2 years in the White House. Former Sen. Howard Baker Jr. said in his introduction to the book that Souza recorded "some of the most intimate, honest and humanizing scenes of the presidency I've ever seen." A updated book, "Images of Greatness: An Intimate Look at the Presidency of Ronald Reagan," was published in June 2004 by Triumph Books. Souza was also the official photographer for the June 2004 funeral of President Reagan.</p>


<p>In 1996, Souza published a documentary photography book entitled, "Plebe Summer at the U.S. Naval Academy". The book chronicles one company of incoming midshipmen through the six-week indoctrination period of Plebe Summer.</p>


<p>Souza has won numerous photojournalism awards including several times in the prestigious Pictures of the Year annual competition, the NPPA's Best of Photojournalism, and the White House News Photographers Association's yearly contest.</p>

<p>He has lectured many times on his photography including at the Smithsonian Museum of American History, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Harvard University, Boston University, Ohio University, the University of Kansas, Western Kentucky University, Kansas State University, the Newseum, Facebook, Atlanta Celebrates Photography, Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar, Truman Library Institute and Adobe Max. He has appeared on CBS Sunday Morning, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, The Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, ABC 20-20, Dateline NBC, Nightline, Charlie Rose, CNN Special Reports, Face The Nation, Fox News Sunday, and the NPR shows Fresh Air, Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Weekend Edition, 1A and Here and Now. </p>

<p>Souza has had solo exhibits of his photographs at the Leica Gallery in NYC; Stephen Kasher Gallery in NYC; The Kennedys Museum in Berlin, Germany; Etruscan Museum in Cortona, Italy; Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas; Fermilab in Illinois; U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland; Navy Museum in Washington, D.C.; University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, N.C.; Boston University; Ohio University in Athens, Ohio; and the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. His photographs have also been part of group exhibits at the National Archives, Smithsonian Museum of American History, Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Newseum, and the 92nd Street Y in NYC. His traveling exhibit, "Two Presidents: Obama and Reagan," debuts in early February 2019.</p>

<p>Souza is a native of South Dartmouth, Mass. He graduated cum laude with a bachelor of science degree in public communication from Boston University and received his master's degree in journalism and mass communication from Kansas State University. He and his wife live in Madison, Wisconsin, along with their pet tortoise, Charlotte.</p>

<p>Peter Joseph Souza (born December 31, 1954) is an American photojournalist, the former Chief Official White House Photographer for U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama and the former director of the White House Photography Office. 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. </p>
<b>Early Life</b>
<p>Souza was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts and grew up in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts, the son of a nurse and a boat mechanic. He is of Portuguese ancestry; both sets of his grandparents emigrated from the Azores.

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. </p>
<i><b>Career</b></i>
<b>Early Career</b>
<p>Souza started his career in the 1970s in Kansas at the Chanute Tribune and the Hutchinson News. 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 from June 1983 until 1989. He was also the official photographer for the funeral services of Ronald Reagan in 2004.</p>

<p>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. 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. </p>
<b>With Barack Obama</b>
<p>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 U.S. senator.</p>

<p>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 in many foreign trips, including those to Kenya, South Africa, and Russia. In the process he not only became close to Senator Obama, he ended up following his rise to the presidency. In July 2008, Souza published a bestseller photo-book The Rise of Barack Obama, featuring photographs between 2005 and 2008.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>Souza was an assistant professor of photojournalism at Ohio University's School of Visual Communication After the November 2008 election, he was asked to become the official White House photographer for his second time for the new President-elect Obama. 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. 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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>Souza's photograph taken at 4:06 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. It also became one of the most viewed images on Flickr.</p>

<p>As White House photographer, Souza traveled with the president to document each meeting, trip and encounter for historical record. Along with his staff, Souza produced up to 20,000 pictures a week.</p>

<p>In November 2011, Souza was included on The New Republic's list of Washington's most-powerful, least-famous people.</p>

<p>As well as using very high end cameras for his presidential photography, Souza occasionally took square shots on his iPhone.</p>
<b>Post-Obama administration</b>
<p>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.</p>

<p>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. In 2018, he announced the release of a new book titled Shade: A Tale of Two Presidents, juxtaposing the Obama and Trump administrations.</p>

<p>In late 2019, Pete Souza and his family moved to Madison, Wisconsin.</p>