Pete Souza Names New White House Photo Staff
By Donald R. Winslow
© 2009 News Photographer magazine
WASHINGTON, DC (February 25, 2009) – Chuck Kennedy, a 20-year veteran Washington photojournalist from the McClatchy-Tribune News Service, has been named to be the assistant director of the White House Photography Office, official White House photographer Pete Souza told News Photographer magazine today as he announced some of the new staff members who will be working with him to document the presidency of Barack Obama.
In addition to administrative duties, Kennedy will be doing "a fair amount of shooting," Souza said.
Also named to posts on Souza's photography staff today are Lawrence Jackson, who will be an official photographer and will be assigned primarily to work with Souza covering the President, and Samantha Appleton, who will be an official photographer who will be primarily assigned to cover the First Lady.
Arun Chaudhary has been named as the official videographer, Souza said, a position that will also facilitate producing multimedia projects for the White House Web site, www.whitehouse.gov.
During the campaign, Chaudhary was Obama's director of field video production and he brought the Obama campaign to life on YouTube and the Obama Web site. Chaudhary, who has been slugged the "YouTube Guru," has said that the campaign's success with video came about because they "took video seriously from the start." During the campaign Chaudhary had six staffers shooting, editing, and posting video, and most of it ended up online (some within minutes of the conclusion of Obama events).
Souza, who has been an NPPA member since 1977, told News Photographer today that these photojournalists have accepted his job offers and that he hopes to have them onboard and shooting by next month.
Kennedy recently gained international attention for his remarkable photograph of Obama's inauguration that he made with a remote camera placed at the foot of the President's podium, an image that required impeccable planning and execution and the construction of a special case to hold the gear and an astute application of today's digital technology.
The work it took to execute the idea and configure the necessary hardware paid off: Kennedy's unique photograph fronted hundreds of newspapers around the world the following day.
Before working for the McClatchy-Tribune Photo Service, Kennedy worked for the Knight-Ridder Tribune Photo Service as a staffer. After college at the University of Maryland he worked at KRT, first as a contract photographer and then later full-time.
Appleton began her journalism career as a writer and became a full-time photographer after assisting James Nachtwey in 1999 and 2000. Since then she's won recognition in the Pictures of the Year competition, received a Kodak Professional Award, attended the 2005 World Press Master Class, and was named one of the "30 Under 30" top photographers by Photo District News. She has also taught at the Maine Media Workshops. Appleton says that most of her projects are self-motivated and concentrate on the social and political consequences of conflict, as exemplified by her stories on Iraq and the struggle to fight malaria in Africa.
Jackson as been a photojournalist for The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, VA, where he spent a decade, and most recently for the Associated Press in Washington, DC, where he's worked for more than five years. Jackson's photographs have been published in The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, U.S. News & World Report, and many other magazines and newspapers.
Earlier story: Pete Souza Named Obama's White House Photographer
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