To mark President Obama’s 100th day, the White House posted an immense slideshow on its site last night and began an official photo stream through flicker, complete with high resolution photos available to download by anyone. This is an amazing development for the presidency.

Back in the day, way before digital photography, someone from the White House Photo Office would walk a handful of photos to the press briefing room and physically hand them to reporters and photographers. During the Clinton years, the White House came online and started to experiment with digital photography. The Bush administration, in which I served as a picture editor, became completely digital at the beginning of the second term.

Now, the White House doesn’t even use email. It simply notifiers editors there’s a high rez photo available for download on the White House web site. The slideshow posted on the White House web site is almost 300 photos strong, or long depending how you see such things. It even comes with the option to view the images as full screen, another new development. For this let’s thank President Obama and Pete Souza, the director of the White House Photo Office.

And with flicker, the White House has turned another page. High rez photos of trips, meetings, the president’s children, the first lady, private moments. . .are all available to everyone and anyone. The photographs are posted with a release statement, “This official White House photograph is being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use print.” But, this primarily means that you shouldn’t make money by selling the photos. It doesn’t address a whole host of potential problems.

Consider for a moment that anyone includes foreign governments, angry right wingers, and simply people who want to make a statement. Besides dealing with the security issues (just what is written on those papers seen on the desk?), the photos become a convenient and easy tool for someone to make a point, “America’s troops are dying, and here is. . .playing golf!” And for good measure, you could photoshop some dead bodies onto the golf green. It’s easy to see why the White House would want to avoid these headaches.

And, this is what’s so great, and brave, about the White House making these photos available. They know that the president’s detractors will use these images against them, and still they make them available to all of us.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/

www.whitehouse.gov