That day a friend was telling her about a student named Barry she ought to photograph “because he’s so cute.” Moments later, the man himself walked in. He agreed to the shoot.
There was nothing out of the ordinary about the session, Jack says, although it impressed her that Obama had taken the initiative to bring the big, banded hat, a leather, bomber-style jacket with a fur collar and cigarettes as grist for her lens. “He obviously thought about how he wanted to have his picture taken.” Obama shared at least one characteristic with the other students who sat for her portraits: “I think the thing that everybody was trying to portray the most was how cool they were.”
Jack appreciated Obama when she ran into him that summer in a Honolulu nightclub — he a local, she a visiting summer student. “He was sitting there with a woman on each lap. They were babes, and I’m not a babe.” But the president-to-be extricated himself, came over to Jack’s table and chatted. That he’d show such courtesy while otherwise engaged “told me Obama was a cool dude,” Jack says.
Article about the photo exhibit from the Los Angeles Times.
Cool dude — and two laps.