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Former Obama Photographer Souza captures President Underwood for ‘House of Cards’

pete souza underwood houseofcards house of cards
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Netflix is gearing up its promotion for the upcoming season of the popular political thriller House of Cards, which will debut on the streaming service on May 30. As part of this campaign for the show’s fifth season, Netflix hired the former Official White House Photographer for President Obama, Pete Souza, to follow around the show’s fictional president, Frank Underwood (played by Kevin Spacey).

Souza has made a bit of a name for himself since leaving his duties in the White House as a political partisan, often using his vast library of images to poke fun at the current administration. This has caused his presence on social media, and Instagram specifically, to grow rapidly, to the point that he now boasts over 1.3 million followers. It is through this medium, Souza’s Instagram account, that Netflix saw the opportunity to promote the upcoming House of Cards season.

Instead of his usual imagery, Souza took to Instagram to post images of Frank Underwood (Spacey) and his chief of staff Doug Stamper (Michael Kelly) at various locations around Washington D.C. The captions will be of particular interest to fans and followers of the show, poking some morbid fun at previous events that have taken place in the House of Cards universe.

Zoe warned me not to get too close.

A post shared by Pete Souza (@petesouza) on

Among the landmarks visited, Souza followed Underwood and team to the White House and the D.C. subway among other locations. Souza knows a thing or two about following a president around, and you can see the similarities between these images of the fictional President Underwood and the real images Souza captured for President Obama.

If you are interested in taking a look at the images that Souza shot for the show, you can find all five of them over on Pete Souza’s Instagram account, here. Netflix will debut the fifth season of House of Cards next Tuesday, May 30, and you can get more information about that from Netflix, here.

Anthony Thurston
Anthony is an internationally published photographer based in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. Specializing primarily in…
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