With the 2008 election only days away, we asked four photographers who have spent years working both in and around the White House to offer their advice for the next president. Here photographers Pete Souza, Diana Walker, David Hume Kennerly, and Robert McNeely reflect upon the role the White House photographer plays in creating an historic record, how the White House press office and the next First Family might work with media photographers, and the value that photographers with access to the White House can have in shaping the public's understanding of both the President and the workings of government. The question prompted thoughts on how important the selection of an official White House photographer can be, and how the Bush administration's handling of the press corps has broken with decades-old traditions.

Pete Souza
Souza worked as an Official White House Photographer for President (Ronald) Reagan, as a freelancer for National Geographic, and as the national photographer for the Chicago Tribune based in their Washington bureau. In 1992 Souza produced and published Unguarded Moments: Behind-the-Scenes Photographs of President Reagan, a coffee table book based on his five and a half years in the White House. His book Images of Greatness: An Intimate Look at the Presidency of Ronald Reagan, was published in June 2004 by Triumph Books. This year he published The Rise of Barack Obama.

I think whoever is president should hire a White House photographer whom he trusts, who has a good sense of history, who understands that the role of White House photographer is to visually document the presidency for history. That should be the number one priority for the White House photographer and the people he or she hires. I 'm concerned that both candidates now have photographers and their main mission is to provide a public relations service. It's fine if the White House press office wants to use photographs taken by the White House photographer for their own purposes, as long as the photographer is documenting for history. If those pictures don't get seen for 20 years, so be it. The president doesn't have to be friends with the photographer, but they certainly have to trust and know him or her well enough to give that person essentially unfettered access to the oval office.

The biggest change in how the presidency relates to White House press photographers is that there are just so many photographers now covering the White House. During the Reagan administration, there was AP, UPI, Reuters. There are just so many photographers and video cameras now [that] it's difficult to manage that number of people. I think it ends up limiting access to the president, which is unfortunate.

You can't accommodate everyone so you accommodate the press pool, but even the press pool is so large that you can't get genuine photographs, so these photo ops occur. I look back at the book I published and probably 95 percent of the pictures in the book are from situations that weren't open to the press. The press opportunities to photograph President Reagan were, in my eyes,  nothing special. I think once all the cameras and reporters went away that I was able to get more genuine, unscripted pictures.

I would encourage the President to occasionally give special access to individuals from different news organizations. I was thinking about the role of the White House photographer in helping outside photographers get access. That's a fine line because in actuality it's the press office's function to determine which outside photographers get access, but I think the right White House photographer can also help facilitate access to outside photographers. David Hume Kennerly was a master of that when he worked for President Ford. It's something for the new administration to consider.  If perhaps the president is flying to Portland, Oregon for the day, then the White House photographer can help facilitate special access for a photographer from the Oregonian so that those readers get a special look at the president on that given day. I don't think that' s the role of the White House photographer [currently], but Kennerly showed that it could be. 



I think the job of White House photographer has to be more than taking hand shake photos. It's really important that whomever the next president chooses has a conversation with him before the administration starts to iron out exactly what that role is. The primary function has to be to document for history. Let's hope that happens for everyone's sake.


Diana Walker
Diana Walker was the White House photographer for Time magazine for two decades. Her books include Public & Private: Twenty Years Photographing The Presidency, which was published in 2002. Her exhibition, "Political Party," is on display at New York's Howard Greenberg Gallery from October 24 to November 22.

How you present a president is very important. "Mission Accomplished" was the biggest gaffe in years. I felt very sorry for the advance person who thought that up because I assumed they must be history.

In setting up a press office for a new administration, it's important that the press officer have a sense of the importance of images, both video and still. One of the things that set the Reagan administration apart was how he was presented. That was all due to [deputy chief of staff] Mike Deaver. One of the most important things in that presentation is lights. The better the president was lit, the better the picture was going to be.  The better the picture, the more likely it'll run. If a portrait was badly lit, it would end up on the cutting room floor.

I can look back on them cynically and think: What does it say about the Reagans that you had this perfectly lit picture of them under the guns on a battleship? That was a perfect photo op and also funny, because they looked like they were the leads in a Busby Berkeley musical. But when I saw the image blown up on a poster in an airport advertising Time magazine, I thought: That's a pretty effective picture of the president and the military.

A lot depends on whom the president appoints as the quote-unquote official photographer. It has to be a strong photographer and they have to assemble a good team. It's a grueling job but they have to have somebody who is really good because the record that's left is terribly important.

I think back on one official photographer in particular. I saw a great deal of Yoichi Okomoto [Lyndon Johnson's official White House photographer]. I knew him, he was wonderful to me and he showed me so much of his work. He had Johnson's total and complete trust, and that makes such a difference. 

You're talking about a human being [Johnson] who is so much more human when you see Okamoto's photographs. Those pictures tell me that that man went through hell, and the sympathy I have for him I can thank Okamoto for. That's the job of the official photographer.  His job isn't to supply us with pictures, it's to tell history what this person went through.



I just believe in behind-the-scenes images of the presidency. Think of a man going out about his business: You learn things from these pictures. You can't give that to a pool. It hardly works when there are two photographers in the room, much less 12 or 20.

When I was doing my first book, I showed all the presidents and first ladies so they could tell me what was going on in the photos for the captions. I remember showing Mrs. [Barbara] Bush the photo of her holding all the puppies. She said, "Honestly, Diana, if I had known you were going to be there, I would have changed my shoes." They were scruffy old shoes. I said, "Mrs. Bush, that was the whole point of the picture."

If Obama is elected, he has two small children. The Obamas could take a page from the Clintons' book. They made a certain pact with the Washington press corps. The Obamas could say: We'll let you have an open photo opportunity when the girls go to the school for the first day, then after that, don't photograph them unless they're with us. It was amazing how everyone showed up to see Chelsea Clinton walk into the door of Sidwell Friends School and that was it. If we saw her walking with other girls, we didn't photograph her.  If they [the Obamas] decide it would be nice for the press to have a picture of the girls on the south lawn or in the Oval Office with him, more power to them. If you do that, you take away the desire for it, and the press isn't always nagging for it.

The President and First Lady can set the tone. You have to keep in mind that if you're willing to be followed occasionally you're giving the country the opportunity to see how you are. Is it absolutely real? No, of course not, because they know you're there. But it's as close as you're going to get.

David Hume Kennerly
Pulitzer-Prize winner David Hume Kennerly has photographed eight presidents. In 1974, he was appointed President Gerald Ford's personal photographer. He has published several books; his most recent is Extraordinary Circumstances: The Presidency of Gerald R. Ford.

When I first started out in Washington I was working for UPI covering President Nixon's [administration] where there was no access to speak of for outside photographers. When I became President Ford's White House photographer, one of the things I wanted to change was increasing access to outside photographers: wire photographers, photographers for magazines and newspapers. During my tenure at the White House I think 60-plus photographers came in to do exclusives.

My ability to do that was predicated on my close relationship with the president. I had a president who liked photographers, who knew most of them by name. He was not a vain man, he didn't care how he looked in pictures. In that way, he was the perfect subject. He trusted me on all things photographic. I became the one-stop shop for photographers: If they needed something, they would ask me and then I would ask him. We kind of cut out the press office or any third parties.



Hopefully whoever the next White House photographer is will be someone of good reputation among photographers as a keen observer of history and not a PR photographer of some kind. And that photographer has to keep in mind that it's a good thing for his subject, be it McCain or Obama, for the photographer to have real access to show real situations.

One part of the job [of White House photographer] is to educate his or her boss, the President, on the value of having other people's points of view so you don't get accused of being a pawn or a lackey for the administration. 

Put this in big, bold headlines: Limit the number of photo releases from the White House.

The current administration has been a confetti machine of hand-outs. They have, in my estimation, tried to supplant outside photography by releasing photos almost on a daily basis of stuff that other photographers should be able to cover. That doesn't include classified meetings – I understand that. But the more photos the White House releases, the less valuable they become, and the more suspect they become. [Using hand-outs] also, I think, erodes the integrity of the White House photo office and of the White House photographer. They make that person look like a PR tool of the administration. The way to offset that is to have a healthy relationship with the White House press photographic press corps and with photographers if they ask for access.

The current White House photographer doesn't have the relationship with the president that I did, and has not lifted a finger to help his colleagues, by the way. That has been to the detriment of his boss, I think. By the way, [White House photographer] Eric Draper is a damned good photographer. I'm not taking away from his ability as a photographer, I'm just criticizing his reluctance to help his colleagues. Granted, he doesn't have that close relationship with the president that I had.
[Editor’s note: Eric Draper responds to that criticism in the Q&A column of PDNews in the December issue of PDN].

Robert McNeely
As a freelance photographer, Robert McNeely covered the McGovern and Carter campaigns and then, in 1992 covered the presidential candidacy of Governor Bill Clinton. He spent six years as the White House photographer during the Clinton administration. In 2000 he set up a project to document all the candidates in the 2000 presidential race. His book, The Clinton Years: The Photographs of Robert McNeely, was published in 2000.

If I could have five minutes with Barack Obama, I'd show him three books. I'd show him
LBJ: The White House Years, which includes a lot of photos by Yoichi Okamoto. Before Okamoto, all the official White House photographers were in the military, and as such they were intimidated by the commander in chief. Okomoto went into every meeting.



I'd show him Kennerly's book about Ford, Extraordinary Circumstances, and I'd show him my book. They show what total access looks like. I'd like the next president to step outside his own skin and see himself, rather than as just an egotist, to see himself as an historical figure. The value of these pictures is that they're not dropped immediately into the media machine, they're in the archive along with the president's papers, and they provide a visual connection to the papers for historians. What did these people look like? What were the meetings like? What was his body language? What was his governing style?

There are times when these pictures have an incredible impact on the day-to-day politics. Do you remember when [Speaker of the House] Newt Gingrich claimed the reason he had shut down the government was because he was ignored on the way [Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak] Rabin's funeral?  He and [Senator Bob] Dole, and former presidents Carter and Bush were on the airplane. The Republicans had just come into power as the majority in Congress. I had these photos taken on the way to the funeral of Gingrich and Clinton talking, and then Clinton back visiting with them at the back of the plane. 

Another time during the budget negotiations I had a photo of them all shaking hands. Then the deal got killed, and we put that photo out. But that's just the day to day stuff. As the White House photographer you're invaluable for providing the reality because everyone in Washingont spins

Kennerly is very proud of the fact that he was part of the [Ford] family.  I never ever wanted to be part of the family. Clinton and I would go all day with no more than a "good morning" and a "good evening, see you tomorrow." Kennerly and Ford would have cocktails together at the end of the day. That's great: That relationship provided a look at President Ford. But that tends to impinge on history looking at the photos as an impartial document.
 
I had a fight with Hillary Clinton in the first month and a half about her having a photographer with her all the time. The first time Hillary went up to the hill to brief Congress on her health care plan, I assigned a photographer to go with her. The photographer said, "She didn't want me to go." The next day there was a photo of her on the front page of The New York Times. I went to see her. The rumor went around that I yelled at Mrs. Clinton. Actually I slapped the newspaper on the desk. I said, "Look at this. The New York Times has this. The archive of the United States doesn't have it." It's the only time I ever had her on the defensive. But you've got to stand up for what's important, and that's history.

There are photos in the archive. You can see Clinton interacting with Monica Lewinsky. It wasn't unknown that she was around, and [special prosecutor] Ken Starr subpoenaed some of that stuff. That's the negative side of it, but you can't go into it thinking, "I shouldn't have a White House photographer in case I screw up." My pitch always was: In 100 years' time, these photos will be really important. They show a sense of reality that can counterpoint a misunderstanding or misinterpretation of a president.