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Photojournalist Lynsey Addario: Portraits of War – Interview Video +
Lynsey
Addario has a perspective on the world very few people will ever understand. As
an award-winning photojournalist, she has traveled to some of the most
dangerous places on earth. Her photographs have documented the horrors of war
and the suffering left in its wake.
In an interview with Yahoo Global News Anchor Katie Couric, Addario tells many of the stories that fill her new memoir: “It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War.”
“Every story takes its toll on me and leaves an impression on me,” she says.
Addario came of age as a photographer in the years after 9/11. She
traveled throughout the Middle East as the “war on terror” raged on. She was
kidnapped in Iraq, and dodged bullets in the mountains of Afghanistan. She
survived a harrowing car wreck that killed her driver. In 2011, while covering
the Libyan uprising, she was captured along with three colleagues from The New
York Times. They were bound, beaten and told they were going to die.
Despite her numerous close calls, Addario says journalists
on the front lines today are at even greater risk from such terrorist
groups as the so-called Islamic State.
“Now it’s a business,” she says. “If you kidnap a journalist, you will make
millions of dollars, or that journalist will be killed.”
Addario is still traveling the world, documenting war and conflict, but
admits she takes fewer risks these days now that she has a 3-year-old son to
think about.
Website
Includes Lynsey Addario Slide Photos.
Lynsey Addario
is an American photojournalist based in London who photographs for The New York
Times, National Geographic and Time Magazine.
Addario is the
author of “It's What I Do:
A Photographer's Life of Love and War,” which has just been
published by Penguin Press.
“It’s What I Do”
follows a course unavoidable for Addario — from her first camera and the pictures
it inspired to early years as a street photographer and the inspiration she
found in the work of Sebastião Salgado. Photography becomes a way for her to
travel with a purpose — a singular ambition that shapes and drives her.
In 2000, she
traveled to Afghanistan to document life and oppression under the Taliban. She
has since covered conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Darfur, Congo and
Libya, shooting features primarily focused on human rights issues and
humanitarian crises across the Middle East, South Asia and Africa.
Addario was just
finding her way as a photographer when Sept. 11 changed the world. One of the
few photojournalists with experience in Afghanistan, she got the call to return
and cover the American invasion.
She made a
decision that she would often find herself making — not to stay home, not to
lead a quiet or predictable existence, but to risk her life, to set out across
the world, and to make a name for herself.
Addario has been
the recipient of numerous awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship in 2009. She
was part of he New York Times team that won the Pulitzer Prize that year for
international reporting.
In January 2015, American Photo
Magazine named Addario one of the top five photographers of the last
25 years to influence the way we see the world. She won the Overseas Press
Club’s Olivier Rebbot Award for "Veiled Rebellion," documenting the
plight of women in Afghanistan. In 2012, she was named by Newsweek magazine as
one of "150 Fearless Women," and in 2010 she was named one of 20
women on Oprah Winfrey's
Power List for her "Power of Bearing Witness."