Obama's White House photographer Pete Souza says Trump pictures look like a 'reality show'

ITV News

16-06-2025

If you don't know Pete Souza, you'd probably recognise his work.
For eight years, he was Barack Obama's chief White House photographer, capturing everything from historic meetings with world leaders to intimate moments between the president and his family.
He was given unprecedented access behind the scenes.
President Trump.
'The photographs from the current administration look like they're from the set of a reality TV show," he told the ITV News podcast Talking Politics.
'You don't get any real sense of Trump's actual humanity, how he relates to people. It's all 'let's bring the press corps in for an entire meeting' and he's just playing to the cameras.
'There's not a single picture of Trump meeting with his national security team in the Situation Room. There's not a single picture of him on the phone with Vladimir Putin, who we are essentially at war against in Ukraine.
"Why is that? Are these photographs not being taken, or is the White House just refusing to post them?'
Mr Souza, who built up an Instagram following of millions by posting photographs from the Obama years as a way of criticising the actions of President Trump during his first term, says this content gap matters for history.
'All of the photographs that I took during the Reagan and Obama administrations, every single photograph is now at the National Archives, the purpose of which is there is a visual record of history of those administrations,' he said.
'So I worry that we're not going to have that kind of record with the Trump administration.'
One significant departure from the traditional photography used in previous administrations has been the Trump team's use of AI imagery.
Since he took office, the White House account has posted pictures of him as a Star Wars Jedi and the Pope, while the president shared a viral 'Trump Gaza' AI video.
For Mr Souza, such moves damage trust.
'To me, if you're going to do that, then you've lost all credibility in what you're posting. Once you post fake images - AI or photoshopped images - then I think you've lost all credibility and I would not lend credence or feel that any photograph that the Trump administration posts is real, because if they've done it before they can do it again.'
According to Mr Souza, there has only been one 'real' image of Mr Trump's presidency so far.
That was of him deep in conversation with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy inside St Peter's Basilica, shortly before the funeral of Pope Francis. It's thought the photo was taken by a member of Mr Zelenskyy's team.
'I thought it was great that this person, whoever he or she is, was smart enough to make an iPhone picture of that scene because it was remarkable,' said Mr Souza.
'Those are the kind of images we're missing from this administration. I hope that more of them exist.
'If there is more of that, then we don't see it. Why is that? I don't know.'
During the eight years of the Obama presidency, Mr Souza took nearly two million photos - whether it was a tense scene, a deeply personal moment or one of pure joy.
For him, there were no strict rules on how to behave around the president - just 'common sense'.
'I'll give you an example,' he told Talking Politics USA. 'I was very cognisant that he had two young girls in the White House. My job was to document him as a dad and as a husband.
'I have this one picture of him out on a swing set with his older daughter, Malia. I went outside with him as he sat on the swing set and was having a private conversation with Malia about her day at school.
'It was a nice picture and I made several frames of that. But then I backed away. I didn't need to be lurking the entire time; I wanted to give him some privacy.
'He didn't ask me to back away, it just seemed like it was the right thing to do.'
Mr Souza says he and the former president are still in touch and meet up 'maybe a couple of times a year'.
'We don't talk politics at all,' he said. 'We talk about our families.'
When asked if Obama has a favourite photo from his presidency, Mr Souza said: 'I think his favourites are the ones with his girls, no question."
'He did like the Spiderman photo of the little kid zapping him into a spider's web just outside the Oval Office. I remember when we hung that on the walls of the West Wing and he said that was his favourite photograph - until we put one up of him with his daughters. Those were always his favourites.'
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