The Profile Dossier: Lynsey Addario, the War Photographer Capturing Our Collective Humanity

“I choose to live in peace and witness war—to experience the worst in people but to remember the beauty.”

Jun 08, 2022

Ukraine. Afghanistan. Iraq. Darfur. Libya. Syria. Lebanon. South Sudan. Somalia. Congo.

Over the past 15 years, war photographer Lynsey Addario has covered every major conflict and humanitarian crisis on the planet. As she sees the destruction and the pain through the lens of her camera, her images translate that intense emotion to people across the globe.

She’s had a number of close calls on the job — she has been kidnapped in Libya, abducted in Iraq, and injured in a car accident in Pakistan. But the one consistent thread throughout Addario’s career is that she never puts the camera down — even in the face of extreme danger.

Addario took the photo that became one of the most haunting images of the Russia - Ukraine invasion — a photograph of a mother, her two kids, and a friend who were killed by Russian mortar fire while fleeing a village on the outskirts of Kyiv. [You can see the photo here, but note it’s graphic.]

The father of the family learned of the death of his wife and children when he saw the searing photograph on Twitter. Addario said, “I thought of my own children of course, and I thought, ‘It’s disrespectful to take a photo, but I have to take a photo — this is a war crime.”

The best way I can think to describe Addario’s photos is that they’re haunting. They draw you in, they give you goosebumps, and they stay with you long after you’ve finished looking at them. It’s almost like they serve as a vehicle for action — you feel an immediate need to act.

“We’re so bombarded with images [of] violence and blood,” she says. “I don’t think an image has to be graphic to be powerful. I think an image has to be subtle, but it has to tell a story.”

And ultimately, that’s what Addario does. She’s a master storyteller who risks her life to tell the stories of ordinary people living in extraordinarily dangerous places.

Here’s what we can learn from Addario about the power of photography, telling a compelling visual story, and why you don’t have to be an activist to enact change.

READ.

On love and war: Addario’s memoir It’s What I Do is the story of how the relentless pursuit of truth has shaped her life. What she does is document the complex lives of others. This book is more than just a snapshot of life on the front lines; it is witness to the human cost of war.

On looking for beauty: Addario says that she’s always trying to get to the heart of a story, and it’s often found in war zones. “I’m also looking for beauty, which confuses people,” she says. “But in my experience, a tough image turns people away, and I want to do the opposite.” In this interview, Addario explains that if you bombard people with images of violence, they won’t look. Her job is to capture the beautiful and the uncomfortable in a compelling photograph you can’t turn away from.

On the power of photography: A powerful photograph can make you feel emotion. It can move you not just emotionally — it can move you to act. “I cover certain stories for a reason because I believe that if the public has access to the scenes that I’m seeing, they will have a visceral reaction,” she said.

WATCH.

On working on the front lines: Riots for bread. Women who tried to commit suicide by setting themselves on fire. Moms dying during childbirth. Addario has not only witnessed it herself, she’s photographed it for the world to see. In this must-watch talk, Addario explains the reality of working on the front lines.

On hiding her pregnancy: Addario didn’t tell her editors at The New York Times that she was pregnant until the six-month mark. “I didn’t want my editors to know because I felt like they would start making decisions on my behalf as to what assignments they would give me, where I could go, and what I could do,” she says. “I didn’t want that. I wanted to talk to my doctor and my husband and make those decisions myself.” While pregnant with her son, Addario traveled on assignment to Senegal, Kenya, Somalia, and Gaza.

On stories of tragedy and resilience: In this lecture, Addario presents a stunning and personally curated selection of her work that reveals major threats to human rights, from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and life in Afghanistan under the Taliban to the stark truth of sub-Saharan Africa and the daily reality of women in the Middle East. The images and stories in her talk illustrate the immense human capacity for tragedy and suffering, but also for hope and resilience.

LISTEN.

On what makes a compelling photo: What makes a good photo? “I think a good photo is one that makes you stop in your tracks and look at it for a long time. It should evoke emotion, it should have a complex composition, something that draws you in and you see more the longer you look at it,” she says. In this podcast episode, we learn what motivates Addario to risk her life in pursuit of a single frame.

POLINA’S TAKEAWAYS.

Good and evil can co-exist: War draws out extremes in character. “In those miserably dark places, I've found the most astonishingly resilient and generous and loving people,” Addario says. “I've seen the most evil people, and I've seen the most unbelievable people.” In Libya, she experienced both cruelty and kindness, both good and evil. It was there that she was kidnapped by Gaddafi’s regime for seven days, but she also met a family that took care of her and her colleagues. “I haven't lost faith at all,” she says. “In fact, before I go through something personally, I think of the women in Africa who live with nothing, who have been through so much hardship, yet they still laugh and smile all the time. These people have taught me so much over the years.”

Stories of impact exist everywhere: To tell a compelling story, you need to be able to find the extraordinary in the mundane. And even though Addario’s job is to photograph areas of crisis, she always manages to capture our collective humanity. “It’s about showing an intimate view and giving people a way to enter the story and to care,” she says. “That takes more time, and it’s hard to do.” A compelling story is one that humanizes and evokes emotion — and those stories exist all over the world. “Most stories I do involve a lot of preliminary research—finding the people I want to spend time with, interviewing them, making them feel comfortable,” Addario says. “I only start shooting hours later, if not days.”

Learn how to calculate risk: If you miscalculate risk — especially in Addario’s line of work — the consequences can be lethal. On a daily (and sometimes hourly) basis, Addario has to weigh the level of danger with the importance of the story she’s trying to tell. She’s learned over the years that miscalculating risk can be life or death. “Our driver in Libya died because of us,” she says. “We made decisions journalistically that were wrong. We should’ve left earlier. That’s something that everyone in that car will have to live with for [the rest of] our lives.” Learn how to tell the difference between calculated risk and recklessness.

Activism isn’t the only way to spur change: Addario does not consider herself an activist. As a journalist, her job is to document the story, not insert herself in it. “I’m not an activist,” she says, “but I am certainly a very active journalist, and I cover things that will hopefully open people’s eyes and educate people.” For instance, Addario went to a province in Sierra Leone where many women were dying in childbirth. She documented the tragic story of one such mom, and her photographs captured the dire situation at play. Two years later, she received a call from Doctors Without Borders who told her they saw her work and they sent five ambulances, offered 24-hour emergency services to the women in that province, and equipped each small clinic in the villages with a radio. Thanks to Addario’s story and Doctors Without Borders’ work, the maternal mortality rate was reduced by 60%. Remember, there is no one way to advocate for meaningful change. (Read more: ‘Why Activism Isn't Enough to Change the World’)

No matter what, life goes on: Perhaps one of the most difficult lessons for humans to grasp is that no matter what is going on in the world, life goes on. It always has and always will. “For me, it’s much more interesting to do ‘life after war,’ or how life on the margins of war continues to go on,” she says. In the midst of war and violence, people still find reasons to celebrate — weddings, graduations, birthdays. “One thing I learned early on in my career is that life goes on, and it’s human nature to want entertainment, to laugh, and to be together,” she said.