Souza started his career in the 1970s in Kansas at the Chanute Tribune and the Hutchinson News.[11] In the early 1980s, he was a photographer for the Chicago Sun-Times.
With Ronald Reagan
Souza in 1983, during his time as Official White House photographer of the Reagan administration
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 a U.S. senator.[13]
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 on many foreign trips, including those to Kenya, South Africa, and Russia. In the process, he not only became close to Senator Obama, but ended up following his rise to the presidency.[6] In July 2008, Souza published a bestseller photo-bookThe Rise of Barack Obama, featuring photographs between 2005 and 2008.[14]
Souza was an assistant professor of photojournalism at Ohio University's School of Visual Communication.[7] After the November 2008 election, he was asked to become the official White House photographer for the second time for the new President-elect Obama.[13][15] On January 14, 2009, the new presidential portrait was released—the first official presidential portrait taken with a digital camera.[16] 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.[13]
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.[17][18]
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.[6]
As the official White House photographer, Souza traveled with the president to document each meeting, trip and encounter for historical records. Along with his staff, Souza produced up to 20,000 pictures a week.[6] Souza's team included David Lienemann, the official photographer for Joe Biden,[22] and Lawrence Jackson (later the official photographer for Vice President Kamala Harris).[23]
In November 2011, Souza was included on The New Republic's list of Washington's most-powerful, least-famous people.[24]
As well as using very high end cameras for his presidential photography, Souza occasionally took square shots on his iPhone.[25][26]
Post-Obama administration
Interview with Pete Souza about his 2017 book. Video from MSNBC.
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.[27]
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.[28] In 2018, he announced the release of a new book titled Shade: A Tale of Two Presidents, juxtaposing the Obama and Trump administrations.[29]
Souza's work during and after the Obama administration is also the subject of the 2020 documentary The Way I See It.[31]
Opinions on subsequent Chief Photographers
In January 2021, Souza gave advice to Adam Schultz, the incoming Chief Official White House Photographer for President Joe Biden. He also noted that the photographer for outgoing President Trump, Shealah Craighead, had posted "very few behind the scenes pictures" to Flickr during her tenure.[32]
^The photos, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/ are (as of January 4, 2009) posted with the following disclaimer, "This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House."
^Savov, Vlad (December 23, 2015). "A year at the White House as seen through an iPhone's lens". The Verge. Retrieved June 9, 2021. Pete Souza has been Barack Obama's chief White House photographer throughout the US president's two terms in office
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