YouSaid · the spoken record

Pete Souza

lines on the record
69
first
2017-11-30
most recent
2017-11-30
sittings or episodes
1
sources
podcast

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  1. “Know you hope that what you're doing is important for history, right? You used to say journalism is the first draft of history. And I'm thinking like, okay, here's a chance to actually really be involved in documenting history.”

    2017-11-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 196 - Pete Souza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Prize winner, yeah, and people like Richard Dirk and Perry Riddle, I mean, just pillars of photojournalism. And so it's great to be on that staff. And it is a fairly small community. And the White House photo editor who had been. at the Kansas City Star, Carol Greenwald was following my career and she was working from Michael Evans who was Reagan's chief photographer and they had an opening. They actually had to dismiss someone. And so they had this opening in 1983. So the middle of Reagan's first term. And she just like called me up one day out of the blue and said, we want you to apply for this job. And I'm like, you know, A, I was not really that into politics, B, I was really not the biggest fan of Reagan.”

    2017-11-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 196 - Pete Souza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Totally unexpected. I actually turned it down at first. Why? Because I was in a really good situation in Chicago. I really felt that I was growing as a photojournalist. I was working with John White, the legendary three-time poet.”

    2017-11-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 196 - Pete Souza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Well, I think you described Byrne fairly well. We never had access to Burn when she was like doing the real people's business. There's always these more public events that were all kind of like”

    2017-11-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 196 - Pete Souza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “So I covered the end of her mayorship and then the little bit of Harold Washington, who eventually became the first African-American mayor of Chicago.”

    2017-11-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 196 - Pete Souza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “It was, I mean, I have to say, having lived in Boston during my That part of it was okay, but it was just the types of assignments you were getting, which were much bigger you were covering major league sports and you were covering spot news that was big spot news and you were covering politics. I was there when Jane Byrne was the mayor and I was covering her a lot and covering the city council meetings and Ed Verdoliac and like just being”

    2017-11-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 196 - Pete Souza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “I didn't know you, but I'll bet if I went back through all my old negatives, I'd see you in the background at some of the Harold Washington events that I covered. So somebody recommended me for a job to the Sometimes it was just like I got a call one day from Henry Gill, who is the director of photography at the Sun Times, and he called me and he goes, we want you to come interview. And I was like, why work every day? I can't. He goes, no, we want you to come interview. So I flew up to Chicago and he hired me. And so I went from a 6,000 circulation daily to a 600,000 circulation daily.”

    2017-11-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 196 - Pete Souza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Lot of dog owners But it's also, I mean, I have a guy punch me out in Chinook, Kansas because I was taking pictures of his factory on fire that police suspected he had started himself to collect insurance money. I had a training. An irate father come and storm into the publisher's office because I had taken a picture of his son's automobile accident that killed someone that his son was responsible for. And, you know, why they lashed out at me. I don't know. I didn't kill the girl that his son did. But, you know, so things like that that you realize your photographs do have an impact even with a newspaper that only has a circulation of 6,000.”

    2017-11-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 196 - Pete Souza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “And all that. So it was a trial by fire, you learn by making mistakes, your name is under every picture in the newspaper. That's an incentive not to mess up, right? You don't want to put a bad picture and have your name under it. I was always trying to make a good picture for every assignment, no matter how bad it was. And that's challenging, especially sometimes in Kansas where if there's a dog that crosses the street at one o'clock, you know, that has a potential to be to page one photo, you know, because. Especially when you're in a town like Chanute, Kansas. Which we had a circulation of 6,000. And I went right away.”

    2017-11-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 196 - Pete Souza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “The great thing about newspapers, especially small newspapers in Kansas, is that you're doing something different every day. You're doing sometimes three, four assignments. So you learn to think quick, react quick, and still go into the darkroom, as I said, this is like in the old days. You got to develop a film and make a print”

    2017-11-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 196 - Pete Souza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “The moment is a moment. But a moment is a moment. You've got to be there. So the fact that I had that trust from President Obama, that meant everything. In terms of moving around and trying to frame a picture and waiting for anticipating the moment and clicking the camera, just the precise moment and what to include in the frame, what not to include in the frame, that's like so hard to, as I said, articulate. It's intuition in so many ways.”

    2017-11-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 196 - Pete Souza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “So hard to articulate that. I feel that even though I was a seasoned guy, as they say during the Obama administration, I felt that was a huge advantage in having had so many experiences in photography and photojournalism that I was sort of unphased by all the power that was before me. That was really helpful to have the confidence to be there that I know I needed to be there and that I had the trust of Barack Obama to allow me to be there because he could have made it difficult for me and he didn't. And I think that The fact that he had the trust in me and made it hard for anyone else to question why I was in the room. And that That's the hardest thing to get over is you've got to be there. You can't write about it afterwards. A reporter can interview people in the room afterwards. They wouldn't have to be in the room.”

    2017-11-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 196 - Pete Souza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “I think photographs not only capturing a decisive moment but trying to Authentically portray the mood and the emotion of what's taking place. I think it's sometimes you can do that. Better with a photograph if the person look looking at the photograph feels that same thing. I mean, photography is subjective more so than words. And you've got to capture people's attention so they so they get to sort of feel what maybe you were trying to show.”

    2017-11-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 196 - Pete Souza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “But anyway. It's funny because I actually did better in college than I did in high school. So I went there because I was a huge sports fan, but I was not a good athlete. So I decided I was going to become a sports writer. That was my goal. And so I applied to the journalism school. It was called the School of Public Communication. It's now the College of Communication. And with the hopes of becoming a sports writer, and then in my junior year, I took a photography class. And it was almost probably the first time that after I had developed a role of film and making the print in the darkroom and that tray of developer, and when that first image appeared, I was hooked and I was like, okay, this is magic. I want to do this.”

    2017-11-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 196 - Pete Souza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “So I went to Boston University after my guidance counselor urged me not to apply there because he said I would never get in. My grades weren't good enough, my SAT scores were not.”

    2017-11-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 196 - Pete Souza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “New Bedford was. Not so much. And I was not a good student. I was probably like the least likely person to succeed in my high school.”

    2017-11-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 196 - Pete Souza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Circle. She now is, she's doing this rehab because she just had somewhat of a health setback. So she's doing a rehab at the same nursing home that she used to work at. Which is like crazy to think about.”

    2017-11-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 196 - Pete Souza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Yeah, I had a sister that was a couple years older than me. At a younger sister, but I didn't really grow up with her. She was 12 years younger. So my mom would get us off to school in the morning. After having just gotten back from work, you know, and get us off to school, make us breakfast, and then she would take a nap and then be there when we got home from school at 3, 30. Then she would make us dinner and get us to bed. And then she would leave the house at ten thirty and go work the overnight shift. And when you think about that now, it's like, my God, how like it's just, it's almost disbelief that she actually functioned like that. You know, most of the times she was working at St. Luke's Hospital in New Bedford. But then she switched and worked at a nursing home in Dartmouth. And you talk about...”

    2017-11-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 196 - Pete Souza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “So, I grew up in, I was born in New Bedford, which in the eighteen sixties was actually the richest city in the world because of whaling. It was a big whaling port. But I grew up in South Dartmouth, which is... Just, I guess, a suburb, if you will, of. New Bedford. My mom Was a nurse, registered nurse. My dad was a boat mechanic. And both of them seemingly worked all the time. And it's funny you look back now on their life. My mom's ninety one. My dad is deceased. But like my mom used to work the eleven PM to seven AM shift when we were. And like, I didn't think much of it then, but when you think about that now, she would get us off to school.”

    2017-11-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 196 - Pete Souza · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source