Pete Souza, the Chief Official White House photographer, has taken approximately two million pictures of President Barack Obama.
He has captured the Commander-in-Chief in all situations - whether it is relaxing with his family or sitting in the situation room, waiting to hear the outcome of the May 2011 mission to kill Osama Bin Laden.
As Obama nears the end of his time in the White House, take a look at 55 of Souza's favorite shots of the president.
The photos show the Leader of the Free World longingly gazing into the mirror before his second inauguration, walking across a bridge in Selma with the first family, and joking with Bill Clinton and George Bush.
Other images show him taking a splash in Hawaii and making a funny face with gymnast McKayla Maroney.
Many of the snaps include him interacting with children, or in romantic situations with his wife Michelle.
Souza's 'Year in Photos' albums on the White House Flickr account show his favorites and go back to 2009. Fifty-five images of the president, seen here, were compiled by Twisted Sifter.
Souza told NPR in an interview: 'There's a certain daily grind to my job, but I'd say, once, twice, three, four, ten times a week, you realize that you are an eyewitness to history. And I always try to keep that forefront in my mind.'
He said: 'I think this administration will go down in history — he'll go down in history as a great president. And just to have been there, to watch this from up close with a camera, has just been a remarkable opportunity.'
Barack Hussein Obama II (US
i/bəˈrɑːk huːˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/;[1][2] born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office and the first president born outside the continental United States. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School between 1992 and 2004. While serving three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004, he ran unsuccessfully in the Democratic primary for the United States House of Representatives in 2000 against incumbent Bobby Rush.
In 2004, Obama received national attention during his campaign to represent Illinois in the United States Senate with his victory in the March Democratic Party primary, his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July, and his election to the Senate in November. He began his presidential campaign in 2007 and, after a close primary campaign against Hillary Clinton in 2008, he won sufficient delegates in the Democratic Party primaries to receive the presidential nomination. He then defeated Republican nominee John McCain in the general election, and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. Nine months after his inauguration, Obama was controversially named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
During his first two years in office, Obama signed into law economic stimulus legislation in response to the Great Recession in the form of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010. Other major domestic initiatives in his first term included the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, often referred to as "Obamacare"; the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act; and the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010. In foreign policy, Obama ended U.S. military involvement in the Iraq War, increased U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan, signed the New START arms control treaty with Russia, ordered U.S. military involvement in Libya in opposition to Muammar Gaddafi, and ordered the military operation that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden. In January 2011, the Republicans regained control of the House of Representatives as the Democratic Party lost a total of 63 seats; and, after a lengthy debate over federal spending and whether or not to raise the nation's debt limit, Obama signed the Budget Control Act of 2011 and the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012.
Obama was reelected president in November 2012, defeating Republican nominee Mitt Romney, and was sworn in for a second term on January 20, 2013. During his second term, Obama has promoted domestic policies related to gun control in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, and has called for greater inclusiveness for LGBT Americans, while his administration has filed briefs which urged the Supreme Court to strike down part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (United States v. Windsor) and state level same-sex marriage bans (Obergefell v. Hodges) as unconstitutional. In foreign policy, Obama ordered U.S. military intervention in Iraq in response to gains made by ISILafter the 2011 withdrawal from Iraq, continued the process of ending U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan, promoted discussions that led to the 2015 Paris Agreement on global climate change, brokered a nuclear deal with Iran, and normalized U.S. relations with Cuba. On President-elect Donald Trump.
Obama was born on August 4, 1961,[3] at Kapiʻolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital (now Kapiʻolani Medical Center for Women and Children) in Honolulu, Hawaii;[4][5][6] he is the first President to have been born in Hawaii.[7] His mother, Ann Dunham, born in Wichita, Kansas, was of mostly English ancestry.[8] His father, Barack Obama Sr., was a Luo from Nyang'oma Kogelo, Kenya. Obama's parents met in 1960 in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where his father was a foreign student on scholarship.[9][10] The couple married in Wailuku on Maui on February 2, 1961,[11][12] and separated when, in late August 1961, Obama's mother moved with their newborn son to attend the University of Washington in Seattle for a year. During that time, Obama Sr. completed his undergraduate economics degree in Hawaii in June 1962, then left to attend graduate school at Harvard University on a scholarship. There he earned an M.A. in economics. Obama's parents divorced in March 1964.[13] Obama Sr. returned to Kenya in 1964 where he remarried; he visited Barack in Hawaii only once, in 1971.[14] When he was killed in an automobile accident in 1982, his son was 21 years old.[15]
In 1963, Dunham met Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian East–West Center graduate student in geography at the University of Hawaii, and the couple were married on Molokai on March 15, 1965.[16] After two one-year extensions of his J-1 visa, Lolo returned to Indonesia in 1966, followed sixteen months later by his wife and stepson in 1967, with the family initially living in a Menteng Dalam neighborhood in the Tebet subdistrict of south Jakarta, then from 1970 in a wealthier neighborhood in the Menteng subdistrict of central Jakarta.[17] From ages six to ten, Obama attended local Indonesian-language schools: Santo Fransiskus Asisi (St. Francis of Assisi) Catholic School for two years and Besuki Public Schoolfor one and a half years, supplemented by English-language Calvert School homeschooling by his mother.[18][19]
Obama returned to Honolulu in 1971 to live with his maternal grandparents, Madelyn and Stanley Dunham, and with the aid of a scholarship attended Punahou School, a private college preparatory school, from fifth grade until his graduation from high school in 1979.[20] In his youth, Obama went by the nickname Barry.[21] Obama lived with his mother and sister in Hawaii for three years from 1972 to 1975 while his mother was a graduate student in anthropologyat the University of Hawaii.[22] Obama chose to stay in Hawaii with his grandparents for high school at Punahou when his mother and sister returned to Indonesia in 1975 so his mother could begin anthropology field work.[23] His mother spent most of the next two decades in Indonesia, divorcing Lolo in 1980 and earning a PhD degree in 1992, before dying in 1995 in Hawaii following treatment for ovarian cancer and uterine cancer
| Assumed office January 20, 2009 | |
| Vice President | Joe Biden |
|---|---|
| Preceded by | George W. Bush |
| Succeeded by | Donald Trump (elect) |
| United States Senator from Illinois | |
| In office January 3, 2005 – November 16, 2008 | |
| Preceded by | Peter Fitzgerald |
| Succeeded by | Roland Burris |
| Member of the Illinois Senate from the 13th district | |
| In office January 8, 1997 – November 4, 2004 | |
| Preceded by | Alice Palmer |
| Succeeded by | Kwame Raoul |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Barack Hussein Obama II August 4, 1961 Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S. |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse(s) | Michelle Robinson (m. 1992) |
| Children |
|
| Parents | |
| Residence | White House |
| Education | |
| Awards | Nobel Peace Prize (2009) |
| Signature |  |
