What’s more interesting about the edit than anything is how defensive it is. In other words, it feels like it’s specifically designed to counter and re-frame Bush’s considerable faults and mistakes. Take the absolutely stunning photo of Bush flying over the smoldering World Trade Center site, for example
“A lot of those moments he knows I’m there and he trusts my presence,” Draper says, “That’s really him.” Which is the point: whether his subject is self-aware or spontaneous, Draper’s portrait of Bush is authentic. Bush was impatient with pretense and known for letting the air out of moments with a joke. He also loved to “surf” the mood in the room, and was a famously talented retail politician, instinctively aware of who was watching him. Draper saw his role as watching the watcher for the telling moment of presidential connection. “My job was watching who he’s looking at and who he’s connecting with,” Draper says.
Eric Draper spent the last eight years alongside George W. Bush as the chief White House photographer. Draper, 44, who had covered the 2000 campaign for The Associated Press, took the White House from film to digital as he met world leaders and mixed it up with Britian’s Prince Philip. He also received an unexpected farewell gesture from No. 43 earlier this week. Here are excerpts from a telephone interview with Draper, who spoke from his home in Alexandria, Va.
