Obama: Lisa Jack Photos

So little is known about Obama's years at Occidental College.

Thanks to Lisa Jack, we have a glimpse of Barry Obama, the college cool guy.

From the Los Angeles Times:

A public that wants to know everything about Barack Obama can thank Lisa Jack for a glimpse of what the future president was like when he was just another college freshman trying to cut a figure in this world -- with a partly unbuttoned Oxford shirt, a big Panama hat and puffs of cigarette smoke as his props of choice for projecting that coveted aura of post-adolescent confidence and cool.

...Her life and Obama's intersected at the Cooler, a campus snack shop.

The young woman from Rye, N.Y., loved her psychology courses but cared enough about photography to find mentors on the faculty who tutored her in independent study courses. With a blanket thrown over the couch she recalls as "a plaid horrible thing," the living room of the apartment she shared in a nondescript quadruplex near the campus in Eagle Rock became Jack's makeshift photo studio. Students from her circle of friends and acquaintances would pose for portraits that she would hand in as her weekly assignments.

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.

Barry, with two babes on his lap.

Barry, the cool dude.

Barry, the player.

Barry, the guy that thinks it's funny to mock Special Olympics participants.

I think what's most revealing about the photos and the session is that Barry was skilled at posing. I get the feeling he spent a lot of time in front of the mirror. Barry comes off as very self-aware, trying to project cool.

This is one of my favorites of Barry:



He's doing a Clint Eastwood squint, yet the hat and the way he's smoking give it a "Huggy Bear" vibe. It's an odd but rather intriguing combination.

Huggy Bear: Dig this. A little bird tells me there's gonna be a big coke deal in Bay City. One for the Guinness books. So they say.

"Dirty Harry" Callahan: [Y]ou've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?

This one makes me think of Barry as a thin Clarence Clemons, a gangly version of the Big Man:



Jack's photos are interesting.

We have some candid, albeit posed and contrived, images of Obama in college.

That's one of the talents that has been crucial to Barry's success -- the ability to contrive an aura of cool.

Now, I really wish Obama would release his academic records. What was that about transparency?

Too bad Jack doesn't have any photos of those.