Lake County museum offers look at White House life

Visitors to the Lake County Discovery Museum can take an intimate look at life inside the White House with the new exhibition “The President's Photographer: 50 Years Inside the Oval Office.”

The exhibit, which opened this month at the Wauconda-area museum, highlights the work of official presidential photographers over the decades.

Since 1963, presidential photographers have served as visual historians, capturing rare moments with unlimited access as history was made before their cameras.

The traveling exhibit is sponsored by the National Geographic Society, and features the works by presidential photographers David Hume Kennerly (Gerald Ford), David Valdez (George H.W. Bush), Bob McNeely (Bill Clinton), Eric Draper (George W. Bush), Pete Souza (Barack Obama) and others.

A statement from Kennerly about life as a presidential photographer greets visitors to the exhibit.

“We do not come with running commentary about what's going on in the room,” he said. “Photographers are not hired for their opinions, they are hired for their photos.”

The exhibit also features the full length PBS documentary “The President's Photographer: 50 Years in the Oval Office” that premiered in November 2010. The exhibit includes a slideshow of real-time pictures by Pete Souza of President Barack Obama through the Flickr: White House PhotoStream.

“It is really interesting and the pictures are really cool looking,” Anna Pizarro, 16, of Lake Barrington, said as she made her way around the gallery. “I really like the picture with the Clintons in it. I like how they were both in the picture and how they both looked concerned.”

The exhibit will be on display until Jan. 11 at the museum, located in the Lakewood Forest Preserve, 27277 N. Forest Preserve Road,

Wauconda.