The White House released about 300 new photos to its Flickr Photostream this week. They are — well, they’re remarkable. And people have been marking on them, over and over and over again. The comments being offered at Flickr range from the funny to the absurd, and in between, there are thank yous and little notes of inspiration — and, because it’s the Internet, of course, there are trolls. The whole stream reads, in fact, like the real story of the first 100 days — frustration, hope, confusion, charm, pride, ire, all of it.
Pete Souza is the White House photographer. He was also an official photographer during President Reagan’s term, and has published two books of photos drawn from those times. He recently gave an interview to John King on CNN, and said, “I look at my job as a visual historian. The most important thing is to create a good visual archive for history, so 50 or a hundred years from now, people can go back and look at all these pictures.”
And from these pictures, in 50 years, I think people will be able to piece together a pretty accurate story of how things were in the White House in 2009.
His work here is stunning not just in quality, but in access. (There’s already been a little kerfluffle on the Internet today about these photos — one exposed the cover-sheet to a Classified Secret CIA fax). More stunning than even that is that these photos are up on Flickr, and under a Creative Commons License. As long as you give credit, you can view them, link to them, download them, share them on your blog or Facebook page, alter them, make them your wallpaper — or just marvel at them, as many times as you want.
I’ve marvelled quite a bit already. The total slideshow takes… well, I don’t know how long it takes. It felt like about five minutes but was probably closer to 30. Here’s a few that caught my eye. Clicking on any of these photos will take you directly to their Flickr pages, from where you can read the comments or follow through the rest of the stream.
Obama at a budget meeting, January 29, 2009:
The President and the First Lady, Feb. 26, 2009:
Secretary of State Clinton and President Obama, April 9, 2009. It was in the low 60s that day.
Obama and his daughters, March 3, 2009:
Obama and David Axelrod leaving a Town Hall in Costa Mesa, Calif. on March 18:
Rahm checks the news, April 24, 2009. The original is large enough to confirm that, yes, that’s USA Today.
All photos by Pete Souza.
And if these left you feeling too hopeful, the White House released photos from the president’s Pandemic Flu meeting today, too.
SATURN SMITH 