There are an awful lot of documentaries about photographers but I believe that this one, even though it is supposedly about Pete Souza, really has Barack Obama and his presidency at its center. As Obama’s official White House photographer for both of his terms, Souza was basically present at every key moment. Yet after the end of Obama’s presidency, Souza was so angered by what he saw Trump doing that he used those photographs to essentially troll Trump and thereby became a celebrity in his own right. There are some bits about Souza himself in it but mainly this is about reminding everyone of the essential humanity and empathy that should be in the office of the US president but is wholly absent from Trump’s White House.

This film has some of the usual biographical bits about how Souza stumbled into the field of photography while at college, was invited to be the official photographer for Ronald Reagan and was assigned to cover Barack Obama while he was still a senator. But it is really the photographs that he takes of Obama and his family that are of interest, especially in how Souza uses them to emphasize Obama’s compassion and thoughtfulness. This would be what elevates Souza himself to celebrity status as he later used these photos as a pointed rebuttal to every public statement and action by Donald Trump during his presidency. Souza and others in the White House staff also provides commentary on the context behind the photographs he chooses to highlight here, including some well known ones that most people would have seen, that I found very interesting and valuable. Some parts of the film are uneven however, with the sequences on the ongoing covid-19 pandemic and the BLM protests being too brief to be of much value. In particular, it feels wrong for Souza, as a photographer, to assert that Obama would have handled the pandemic better than Trump.

This film isn’t so much a biography of Souza than a political statement that opposes Trump’s version of America. As Souza himself puts it very well, it would be beneath the dignity of Obama to personally respond to each of Trump’s outrageous tweets as that would amount to descending to his level. So Souza and other Obama loyalists felt that they had to step up to rebut Trump’s statements on Obama’s behalf, and Souza chosen method of choosing photographs from Obama’s presidency that highlights the crassness and utter lack of any empathy in the Trump presidency is a brilliant and elegant way to do it. Souza’s personal affection and admiration for Obama shines through in every photograph and the impossibility of finding anyone in the Trump staff who would be willing to speak up for Trump in this manner is telling. I also like Souza’s own relative humility in this, as he downplays his own role and is careful to emphasize for example that he isn’t a war photographer even though he travelled to Afghanistan to take photographs following the September 11 attacks.

As Souza notes, his work was possible only because of the extraordinary level of access Obama granted to him and that in turn can only be due to the trust and personal connection that he enjoyed. I’d note that it still isn’t quite true that this results in wholly unposed, candid photographs as Obama is obviously such a media-savvy politician that he is constantly aware of the cameras on him. Souza of course is a skilled professional but he was also lucky to have such a talented subject in Obama who is always willing to play along for the camera. Still I suppose it’s true that it’s unimaginable to see Trump act like this. What’s unusual isn’t that Obama is an empathic and decent human being, surely it isn’t too much to expect this basic level of decency out of everyone, let alone the elected leaders of a democracy. The outlier is that Trump manifestly cannot even pretend to behave like this, yet he somehow is unable to convince nearly half of Americans that he is a worthy leader.

While it’s always heartwarming to watch these scenes of perfectly ordinary intimacy among the members of the Obama family, this is probably still not that interesting a documentary. I think this was released in time to influence the 2020 elections in the US and played perhaps some role in reminding everyone how outrageous Trump has been in flouting every norm and every standard of acceptable behavior but I can’t see it having any lasting value beyond this.