Senator Barack Obama

Photographing Senator Barack Obama was a remarkable experience – Tamara wrote about her experience doing so in the June, 2008 issue of Rangefinder Magazine. On the world-changing scale, the Washington Post had this to say:

A Run for the Ages?
Scholars Say Obama’s Campaign Is History in Motion

Already, the adjective “historic” seems permanently attached to news media descriptions of Barack Obama’s emergence as the presumptive Democratic nominee for president. News anchors and pundits deploy the term with abandon, but what do actual historians think?

“I think this will be in a class by itself,” said John Hope Franklin, who at 93 is the dean of the American historians who think and write about race. Obama’s campaign “is the most radical, far-reaching, significant [undertaking] by any individual or group in our history,” he said. “This strikes at the very heart of national ideology on race and the political patterns of this country’s history.”

Barack Obama’s quest has not gone unnoticed. Many speak to his ability to transcend parties, to heal a nation, with no concern for the historical impacts of his race. Attracting thousands at town hall meetings, rallies, and a myriad of events, a record 75,000 individuals came out to see him speak in Portland, Oregon in May of 2008.

Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of President Kennedy, endorsed Senator Obama by stating, ” I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president – not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.”