May 30, 2012
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Story Gives New Life to Obama Photo
Story Gives New Life to Obama Photo
May 29, 2012 at 6:08 PM
White HouseStory Gives New Life to Symbolic White House Photo
A 2009 photograph of President Obama bending over so a 5-year-old African American boy can touch his hair is enjoying renewed popularity after reporter Jackie Calmes recounted the story behind the image last week in the New York Times.
On the day it ran, Dylan Stableford reported for Yahoo News, it was most-emailed article on the Times’ website.
Calmes’ piece began, “For decades at the White House, photographs of the president at work and at play have hung throughout the West Wing, and each print soon gives way to a more recent shot. But one picture of President Obama remains after three years.
“In the photo, Mr. Obama looks to be bowing to a sharply dressed 5-year-old black boy, who stands erect beside the Oval Office desk, his arm raised to touch the president’s hair — to see if it feels like his. The image has struck so many White House aides and visitors that by popular demand it stays put while others come and go.”
Leutisha Stills, writing as “rikyrah” on the Jack & Jill Politics blog, reprinted the Calmes piece and declared, “I consider this to still be THE picture of Barack Obama’s Presidency.“
Washington Post editorial writer Jonathan Capehart wrote, “The first time I saw it was while walking through the West Wing to a meeting three years ago. “The image was so powerful I stopped in my tracks . . .
“. . . Thanks to the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, we African Americans are sensitive about our heads and our hair. A pat on the head, especially from someone white, would be patronizing at best. ‘Don’t let anybody touch your head,’ my mother told me when we moved from Newark to a predominantly white town in New Jersey. I would learn at school that some would rub the head of someone black for good luck. And there were all sorts of put-downs for black hair — from Brillo to something not appropriate to mention in a family forum such as this. Thus, having your head touched is a rather intimate gesture that only family could get away with.”
In the New York Times, Frank Bruni wrote on Sunday, “Forget your political affiliation. Never mind your assessment of his time in office so far. If you have any kind of heart, you’re struck by it: the photograph of Barack Obama bent down so that a young black boy can touch his head and see if the president’s hair is indeed like his own. It moves you. It also speaks to a way in which Obama and Mitt Romney, whose campaigns are picking up the pace just as polls show them neck and neck, are profoundly mismatched.”
Jonathan Jones wrote Friday for Britain’s Guardian newspaper, “Spontaneous or staged this photograph tells a truth. All over America, all over the world, children are growing up in the simple knowledge of who this president is. It matters. Obama is a great historical fact — touch it, dude,” Jones wrote, echoing Obama’s command to the young boy.
Pete Souza, a former photographer for the Chicago Tribune as well as the Reagan White House, told Calmes, “As a photographer, you know when you have a unique moment. But I didn’t realize the extent to which this one would take on a life of its own. . . .”
“David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s longtime adviser, has a copy framed in his Chicago office,” Calmes continued. Axelrod said of the young boy,Jacob Philadelphia, “Really, what he was saying is, ‘Gee, you’re just like me.’ And it doesn’t take a big leap to think that child could be thinking, ‘Maybe I could be here someday.’ This can be such a cynical business, and then there are moments like that that just remind you that it’s worth it.”
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