Lynsey Addario
Lynsey Addario
Lynsey Addariois an American photojournalist. Her work often focuses on conflicts and human rights issues, especially the role of women in traditional societies...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhotographer
Date of Birth13 November 1973
CountryUnited States of America
cannot capture days displaced dramatic fleeing frame heartbreak home images iraqi iraqis lives nonstop scope staring thousands watching
One day I am at home, watching dramatic images of Iraqi Yazidis fleeing for their lives being aired nonstop on 24-hour news channels. Days later, I am there, staring at tens of thousands of displaced Iraqis and feeling a 35-millimeter frame cannot capture the scope of devastation and heartbreak before me.
chipping existed muslim parts profound strip women
The more I photographed Muslim women, the more I was able to metaphorically strip away the burqas and hijabs, and start chipping away at the profound misconceptions that existed in other parts of the world about these women and their culture.
became calling covering people realized war zones
I think when I started going to war zones and started covering humanitarian issues, it became a calling because I realized I had a voice, and I can give people without a voice a voice... and now it is something that sits inside of me every day.
attacks basically became bombs car cared covering iraq leave norm realize
I think there were times when I first started out, when I was covering Iraq - I was basically living there in 2003 and 2004 - that car bombs and attacks became so the norm that it was weird for me to leave and realize that no one else actually cared about what was going on there.
arms asked backs begging behind deciding execute face hostage lives putting remember taken tying whether
I remember the moment in which we were taken hostage in Libya, and we were asked to lie face down on the ground, and they started putting our arms behind our backs and started tying us up. And we were each begging for our lives because they were deciding whether to execute us, and they had guns to our heads.
experience held passionate people siblings whatever
I was lucky because I had parents who have enabled me to do whatever I was passionate about and never held my siblings and me back from anything. But I think a lot of people don't have that experience.
constantly feature solely trying
For me personally, I'm constantly trying to really re-negotiate how I'm going to make a living because I can't make a living solely off editorial. And I'm also still trying to tell long feature stories that are harder and harder to get assigned, you know.
believed death knew pay possible willing work
I always knew my death would be a possible consequence of the work I do. But for me it was a price I was willing to pay because this is what I believed in.
affected looking margins people quieter strength war
My strength is looking for composition and light, and I think those things come in the quieter times of war or photographing people affected on the margins of war - civilians, refugees; that is where I really excel.
adrenaline anyone families idealism life risking strain suffer work
Look, I would say that anyone who does this work and doesn't have a strain of idealism is an adrenaline junkie or completely narcissistic. There is no other justification. You're risking your life, and if anything happens, it's our families who suffer tremendously.
assumed case connect consumed covering home troops wars wrongly
I just immediately connect everything to the wars I have been covering overseas, and that's not the case back home. I wrongly assumed all Americans at home were as consumed with our troops in Afghanistan as I was abroad.
covered fall returning states taliban three time trips united war
By the time the United States went to war with Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, I had made three trips to the country. I covered the fall of the Taliban in Kandahar and have been returning routinely for the past 14 years.
becoming certainly changed harder
Becoming a mother hasn't necessarily changed how I shoot, but it certainly has made me more sensitive, and it certainly makes it much harder for me to photograph dying children.
associated fell grew love worked york
I grew up in Connecticut, going in and out of New York City, and I worked in the city in the '90s. I was freelancing for the Associated Press, and I fell in love with New York.