Arun Chaudhary: The man who films the president

Arun Chaudhary knows the president from every angle, said Ashley Parker in The New York Times. As the first official presidential videographer, the 35-year-old spends hours every week darting through the corridors of the White House or traversing the globe, so as to capture President Obama’s every interaction on video. A one-man operation who relies on a good pair of sneakers, Chaudhary often gets his best material when the president is out of the public eye. “Whether you are in the United Nations or a castle in Prague, anything can happen, and probably will, in the hallway,” he says. He loves capturing “awkward foreign leader moments,” such as when the president once tried to introduce the leaders of Chile and the Netherlands only to discover they already knew each other.

Part historian and part propagandist, Chaudhary knows that the moments he captures will someday wind up in Obama’s presidential library and in history books. One such video, he recalls, captured the president joking with Elena Kagan just before he nominated her to the Supreme Court. “What if that had been LBJ and Thurgood Marshall?” says Chaudhary. “In 20 years, that will be amazing.”

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