Blog About Photography

Obama Black­Ber­ries out­side the Oval Office yesterday

I drive a Kia and I’m going to be a movie star.

Since I’m on this pres­i­den­tial pic­tures kick, here’s that famous Annie Lei­bovitz shot of the Bush peo­ple from 2001. I couldn’t find it for the longest time but then Van­ity Fair ran it again the other day along­side their arti­cle, “Oral His­tory of the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion,” also worth read­ing. What a fan­tas­tic and unpar­al­leled col­lec­tion of swag­ger­ing, incom­pe­tent assholes.

Cour­tesy of the White House via Getty Images

So this has been my new rit­ual since Barack got sworn in as pres­i­dent: When I sit down at the com­puter to check my nightly vitals, I spend at least five or six min­utes scour­ing the inter­net of new pic­tures of the commander-​​in-​​chief of my heart sit­ting in the Oval Office. I have an Oval Office fetish, actu­ally. I know all kinds of trivia about it, the tra­di­tions that sur­round it’s re-​​decoration, who had what color car­pet (Clin­ton: blue, Bush: yel­low) and so on. My fas­ci­na­tion with the most exclu­sive room in the world though is very sep­a­rate from my feel­ings for what­ever shit sack occu­pies it – until now.

Pres­i­dent Obama has had a pretty busy first week and he hasn’t got­ten around to redec­o­rat­ing yet. He’s taken down most of Bush’s art, most replac­ing, if I’m not mis­taken, a por­trait of Teddy Roo­sevelt with one of Abra­ham Lin­coln. (Wash­ing­ton still graces the man­tle.) Bush’s yel­low rug, couches and drapes are all still present. And the lap­top Obama promised to place on the FDR desk still has yet to materialize.

This is all based on the cou­ple of pic­tures that exist of Obama’s oval office. There are, in fact, only a hand­ful of them. By the end of an admin­is­tra­tion, offi­cial White House pho­tos of the pres­i­dent and his guests in the Office abound. But a week in, there are three offi­cial ones includ­ing the one up top and a hand­ful of wire images from when Obama signed the order to close Guan­tanamo Bay.

One thing that I just started think­ing about while writ­ing this is why all the art in the Oval Office has to be America-​​themed. Like, if they filled the walls with Pol­locks and Van Goghs and Kneels, would any­one meet­ing with the pres­i­dent for­get that they were in the office of a head of state? I don’t think so. Why limit your­self to the same hand­ful 19^th cen­tury oils? 

Any­way, the thing I’m really try­ing to share with you is that it’s amaz­ing to see this guy sit­ting at the desk in there. That’s really my point. 
>

I also recently man­aged to get an appli­ca­tion off to the Yale School of Art’s pho­tog­ra­phy MFA pro­gram. A whole slew of amaz­ing and gen­er­ous human beings helped me do it, so thanks, guys. And lis­ten, if you have money to pay me to do some­thing for you, go ahead and do it already for fuck’s sake.