Pete Souza

Pete Souza is an American photojournalist and the current chief White House photographer since Obama inauguration.

Born in 1954 in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts, he gratuated a bachelor of science in public communication from Boston University and a masters degree in journalism and mass communication from Kansas State University.

He served as an official White House photographer for President Ronald Reagan from june 1983 until Reagan left the White House in 1989. Based in Washington DC, he worked for ten years as a photographer for the Chicago Tribune and he covered Obama’s arrival in the Senate in 2005. He met him for the first time on Obama's first day in the Senate when he was sworn in as a Democrat from Illinois in January 2005. He documented Obama's first year in the Senate, following him in many foreigh trips including Kenya, South Africa, and Russia. In July 2008, Souza pusblished a bestseller photos book "The Rise of Barack Obama," in which this year photographs were compiled.

Souza has also worked as a freelancer for National Geographic and Life magazines. After 9/11, he was among the first journalists to cover the war in Afghanistan and the fall of Kabul.

He was an assistant professor of photojournalism at Ohio University's School of Visual Communication when he was asked January 4th to became the Obama photographer.