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Matinee: 'Eric Draper, Former Chief White House Photographer'
3 February 2024
Saturday matinees long ago let us escape from the ordinary world to the island of the Swiss Family Robinson or the mutinous decks of the Bounty. Why not, we thought, escape the usual fare here with Saturday matinees of our favorite photography films?
So we're pleased to present the 538th in our series of Saturday matinees today: Eric Draper, Former Chief White House Photographer.
In this 5:40 video by Nicholas Rousseau and Ben Smith, former chief White House photographer Eric Draper reminisces about covering George W. Bush.
He was studying fine art photography in junior college when a friend got him involved in the college newspaper. He quickly caught the photojournalism bug.
Draper worked for a few publications before going to New Mexico where to join the Albuquerque Journal. There, he says, he learned the art of story telling.
As an Associated Press photographer, he was assigned to cover the Bush's first campaign for the White House. After the election he thought he'd take a page out of Bush's playbook to apply for the job as his personal photographer.
Bush had told voters he would look them in the eye and ask for the job. So that's what Draper did. And it worked.
He didn't know anything about being the personal photographer for a president but he quickly learned to establish a routine, following Bush on his way to the office and staying in front of him throughout the day.
He remembers the moment Bush stood on the rubble after Sept. 11 with a bull horn. "The hair on my neck stood up," Draper says.
But it wasn't all high drama. There are a couple of amusing shots with dogs, too. Documenting Bush's humanity, he says, "was fun." Anybody famous is still human, he notes. "In a lot of ways, he was just like us."