It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

by Lynsey Addario

Everything they said surprised me. It had been naïve of me to think that, given all the repression women in Afghanistan were facing—their inability to work or get an education—wearing a burqa would be high on their list of complaints. To them, the burqa was a superficial barrier, a physical means of cloaking the body, not the mind.

The women also put my life of privilege, opportunity, independence, and freedom into perspective. As an American woman, I was spoiled: to work, to make decisions, to be independent, to have relationships with men, to feel sexy, to fall in love, to fall out of love, to travel. I was only twenty-six, and I had already enjoyed a lifetime of new experiences.

my family chose not to tell me, because I was far away and there was nothing I could do. I often lived with an aching emptiness inside me. I learned early on that living a world away meant I would have to work harder to stay close to the people I loved.

Through these women I began to understand the depth of hatred this bias fostered across the Muslim world,

I became fascinated by the notion of dispelling stereotypes or misconceptions through photographs, of presenting the counterintuitive. In Pakistan I learned quickly to tuck away my own political beliefs while I worked and to act as a messenger and conduit of ideas for the people I photographed.

lounging, all of them smitten with their afternoon’s work, checking the backs of their digital cameras for their prizewinning photographs, completely oblivious to what I had gone through to compose even one frame.

but a cliché I had seen from mass graves before; as still images they could never convey the depth of what I was witnessing.

American soldiers shot off their weapons above the crowds, sometimes punching the very men they were there to “liberate.” Fires raged as looters prowled the streets pirating electrical wires. Checkpoints began popping up around the city.

L. Paul Bremer, disbanded the entire Iraqi army, leaving thousands of trained soldiers angry, jobless, and unable to feed their families.

American soldiers screaming at the crowds until the veins along their necks popped out.

We had learned from the killing of a Reuters photographer on the balcony of the Palestine Hotel that a long lens could be mistaken for a rocket-propelled grenade.

The Americans wanted to bring democracy to Iraq, but a convenient form of democracy that allowed them to censor the media. Iraqi insurgents had begun attacking Americans. And American journalists—who had every right to take pictures of these public scenes—were beginning to face censorship. We were allowed to cover only what the

people with guns wanted us to see.

The fence I had halfheartedly slung up between my work and my home had finally collapsed.

Thurayas, smallish satellite phones that could make calls anywhere east of London and north of a satellite floating in the sky above Madagascar.

I was now a photojournalist willing to die for stories that had the potential to educate people. I wanted to make people think, to open their minds, to give them a full picture of what was happening in Iraq so they could decide whether they supported our presence there. When I risked my life to ultimately be censored by someone sitting in a cushy office in New York, who was deciding on behalf of regular Americans what was too harsh for their eyes, depriving them of their right to see where their own children were fighting, I was furious.

The war in Darfur began in 2003 when rebel militias made up of ethnic black Africans began attacking the Sudanese government—composed primarily of Arabs—to protest institutional racism and injustices against their tribes.

Tread lightly, be respectful, get into the story as deeply as I could without making the subject feel uncomfortable or objectified. I always

Trying to convey beauty in war was a technique to try to prevent the reader from looking away or turning the page in response to something horrible. I wanted them to linger, to ask questions.

The sadness and injustice I encountered as a journalist could either sink me into a depression or open the door to a new vision of my own life. I chose the latter.

“Marry your best friend,” my mother used to say. “You don’t want to marry for passion, because the passion fades. Marry someone who makes you laugh, who you can spend time with. Looks fade. Passion fades.”

wasn’t just that Paul was accepting of my work—he was energetically supportive, excited to help me plan my reporting, fascinated by the next possible story, and visibly proud of my accomplishments. Few men were this engaged in their girlfriends’ careers. I couldn’t help but be suspicious.

This was usually “Get down!” or “Run!” A part of me always quietly hoped for a brief gun battle; there were only so many pictures I could take of troops standing guard with their guns and talking with villagers. But when the bullets started flying, I prayed only for the battle to end.

There is a somewhat accurate cliché of the ever-haunted war correspondent who can’t escape the darkness of what he has seen and drowns himself in drugs or sex or more war because he can’t face the ordinary or leaves the profession because he is finally broken by it. I didn’t want to be that person.

I had long convinced myself that my cameras and I would grow old

together alone in some remote corner of the planet.

I even started shooting regularly for National Geographic magazine, an honor for any photojournalist. My ambition actually seemed to grow with time. Quite often the most ambitious or prestigious assignments were the riskiest ones. I spent much of 2008 and 2009 in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the War on Terror still raged.

I was always being dressed up as someone’s wife.

Only among Muslims is the hospitality so great that they cannot bear the notion that someone’s tea will be left untouched.

I didn’t want to discuss it over lunch with friends when I was still physically and emotionally fragile. The suggestion that my work had become too dangerous, or that somehow getting pregnant was an adequate replacement for photography, struck chords deep down in me about my work, my life, and how I chose to balance the two—especially as I approached my wedding date.

I used some lame word like “quandary” and then wondered if he was going to take the money back, thinking, “She isn’t really a genius.”

My success was his as well. Paul, who understood the limitations of fast-paced breaking-news journalism, had always encouraged me to work on longer-term projects, which, he argued, would allow for more artistic freedom as well as a chance to go deeper into a story.

But was the pursuit of a story worth his life? This was a question without direct answers, in a way. Of course, none of us could say that a story was actually worth a life, or worth the pain we caused others. That was ridiculous. But I hoped we’d been clear with our families, our drivers, and our interpreters about how great a risk it was to love us or work with us.

Regardless of how much pain they suffered as a result of my professional decisions, they always supported me. They had given me a boundless inner strength.

Journalists who got kidnapped several times were not necessarily heroes in our business. Bravery was one thing, recklessness another.

For the first time I felt the weight of the years of accumulated trauma.

Perhaps it was because I realized how precarious life was and how arbitrary death was.

I had been seeing that reality for years. But somehow, I had to admit, my pregnancy and the vulnerabilities of motherhood had offered me yet another window on humanity, yet another channel of understanding.

I hadn’t truly understood that painful, consuming, I-will-do-anything-to-save-this-human-being kind of love.

My dreams for my child were the same ones that I knew compelled so many women around the world to fight for their families against the most unimaginable odds. My experience as a parent has taught me a new understanding of the subjects I photograph.

a young woman who wanted nothing more than to travel the world and to document the stories of people and their hardships. I was insatiable in my quest to document the truth with my photographs and threw myself into the midst of any situation without regard for the consequences, believing that if my intentions were pure and I focused on my work, I would be OK. Though I still work with the same dedication, I have grown more cautious with every brush with death, with every friend lost. Somewhere along the way my mortality began to matter.

approached, their shoulders sometimes brushing mine, and every few

and the material in this book would not have been possible without the help of so many. From my parents, whose impassioned encouragement to follow my heart and dreams sent me out into the world, to the editors, photographers, and journalists who have taken me under their wings along the way, I am forever grateful to all of you. A countless number of men, women, and children around the world have so bravely opened their most intimate moments to me and my camera: I can only hope that your generosity, resilience, and candor will help provide fortitude and inspiration to others the way they have to me.

You are selfless in your love and support, and I’m so grateful for every day we share together. You make me a better person.