Before Lukas, you know I didn't really think about my mortality, 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. Lynsey Addario More Quotes by Lynsey Addario More Quotes From Lynsey Addario It's very hard to turn your back once you're aware of what's going on, and you're aware of the injustices, and you're aware of the civilian casualties. Lynsey Addario world It's very hard to turn your back once you're aware of what's going on, and you're aware of the injustices, and you're aware of the civilian casualties. It's much easier if you have no idea and you've never seen it. Lynsey Addario your never back you The fact is that trauma and risk taking hadn't become scarier over the years; it had become more normal. Lynsey Addario more become trauma risk 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. Lynsey Addario i-am day me home You have two options when you approach a hostile checkpoint in a war zone, and each is a gamble. The first is to stop and identify yourself as a journalist and hope that you are respected as a neutral observer. The second is to blow past the checkpoint and hope the soldiers guarding it don't open fire on you. Lynsey Addario you fire hope war To me, it's so much about doing your homework, going into a situation, getting to know the subject, making them feel comfortable, getting intimate access, getting access to all different aspects of people's lives so that I am essentially telling an entire story and not just a single image. Lynsey Addario i-am feel me people I think it's important to have perspective and to look at what you don't necessarily want to see. Lynsey Addario look think you perspective As a woman, I have tried to take advantage of the extra access I have in the Muslim world: with Muslim women, for example. Many people underestimate women in that part of the world because, typically, they don't work. Lynsey Addario woman women work people For a journalist who covers the Muslim world, we have responsibilities to be familiar with that culture and to know how to respond to that. Lynsey Addario how know culture world It seems like, yeah, of course - I always think my work is important, or I wouldn't risk my life for it. Lynsey Addario my-life think work life 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. Lynsey Addario face lie moment remember I wanted to continue doing my work, but I had to figure out how. And so what I have basically come up with is that I still go to Afghanistan and Iraq and South Sudan and many of these places that are rife with war, but I don't go directly to the front line. Lynsey Addario doing go work war I was kidnapped by Sunni insurgents near Fallujah, in Iraq, ambushed by the Taliban in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan, and injured in a car accident that killed my driver while covering the Taliban occupation of the Swat Valley in Pakistan. Lynsey Addario accident car-accident pakistan car I had imposed unspeakable worry on my husband, Paul de Bendern, on more occasions than I could count. Lynsey Addario count more husband worry The truth is, the difference between a studio photographer and a photojournalist is the same as the difference between a political cartoonist and an abstract painter; the only thing the two have in common is the blank page. The jobs entail different talents and different desires. Lynsey Addario difference truth-is political truth Sometimes when I am photographing a major news event, I am suddenly overwhelmed by helplessness. Lynsey Addario event i-am news sometimes I had first visited Kurdistan in 2003 before the invasion of Iraq, camping out in Erbil and Sulaimaniya while waiting for Saddam Hussein's fall. Lynsey Addario out first waiting fall 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. Lynsey Addario day me war people I didn't know a single female photographer who covered conflict who even had a boyfriend, much less a husband or a baby. Lynsey Addario know conflict husband baby A lot of women act like it's the easiest decision, and I'm just going to have a baby and put my life on hold and not be worried about it. Well, I was worried. Lynsey Addario my-life women decision life
