Obama Barack - Obama: an intimate portrait

The man was seated at a desk in a windowless basement office. Two aides had just left the room. I was now alone with the new U.S. Senator from Illinois. It was January 5, 2005.

One of his feet was propped up on the desk. A government computer had been dumped on the floor, cables strewn. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead. The desk held only a few objects, including a notepad, a book (Robert Caros Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson), and a mouse pad. The Senator was reading a document, paying me no mind.

Click. I made a nice candid frame of this scene, as any photojournalist would do. I was using a quiet camera. I didnt want to disturb him. Click. I paused. Click again. I waited for a gesture, something, anything. He never once looked up at mejust went about his business. So I went about my business too. I captured a few more frames and walked out. I had what I needed.

I had just met Barack Obama the day before, when he had been sworn in as a 43-year-old Senator. It was a day of pomp and circumstance. He had his family in tow: a stylish wife and two young daughters.

I saw right away how much those girls meant to him. He doted on them throughout the day. Making sure they were comfortable. Bending down outside the Capitol after Malia, then six, had twirled a little dance just for him. Later, inside the Capitol, getting kisses from Sasha, then three, and Malia in the middle of chewing a sandwich. All the while, it was as if he didnt even notice there was this photographer with him, capturing those moments throughout the day.

How lucky for me that I happened to be the Washington photographer for the Chicago Tribune, the young Senators adoptive hometown newspaper. That day was the first day documenting his first year in the Senate. Jeff Zeleny, the political reporter for the paper, and I were preparing a series of major stories throughout the year, tracking how the new Senator adjusted to life in Washington and what hed done while he was there. The plan was for me to spend as much time as I could with him between other assignments.

After only 24 hours, I had already begun thinking a crazy thought. The Senator was not from a famous or political family. His father was from Kenya, his mother from Kansas. His name was Barack Hussein Obama. But he had a gift.

What if? I thought to myself. Could I be observing the future President of the United States? I imagined how that photograph of him seated at his stale bureaucratic desk in his drab government office might compare with a future photograph of him sitting at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.