Lynsey Addario


Lynsey Addario is an American photojournalist. Her work often focuses on conflicts and human rights issues, especially the role of women in traditional societies.

Life and work

Lynsey Addario was born and raised in Westport, Connecticut to parents Camille and Phillip Addario, both Italian-American hairdressers. She graduated from Staples High School, in Westport, Connecticut in 1991 and from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1995. She also holds two Honorary Doctorate Degrees, one from the University Of Wisconsin-Madison in Humanities, and another from Bates College in Maine.
Addario began photographing professionally with Buenos Aires Herald in Argentina in 1996 with, as she says, "no previous photographic training”. In the late 1990s, she moved back to the United States and freelanced for the Associated Press in New York City, only to move back to South America less than one year later. Focusing on Cuba and the effect of communism on the public, Addario made a name for herself. She moved to India a few years later to photograph under the Associated Press, leaving the United States.
While living in India, Addario traveled through Nepal, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, focusing on humanitarian and women’s issues. After the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, Addario resolved to photograph Afghanistan and Pakistan under the Taliban.
While in Pakistan, Addario was given her big break and put on rotation for The New York Times. During this time, she “used her gender to get inside the women’s Madrases to interview and photograph the most devout Pakistani women.” Addario spoke at length with her subjects, inspiring her to use photography to “dispel stereotypes or misconceptions; of presenting the counterintuitive.”
In 2003 and 2004, Addario photographed the Iraq war in Baghdad for The New York Times. She has since covered conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Darfur, Republic of the Congo, and Haiti. She has covered stories throughout the Middle East and Africa. In August 2004 she turned her attention to Africa, focusing on Chad and Sudan.
She has photographed for The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Time, Newsweek, and National Geographic.
In Pakistan on May 9, 2009, Addario was involved in an automobile accident while returning to Islamabad from an assignment at a refugee camp. Her collar bone was broken, another journalist was injured, and the driver was killed.
Addario was one of four New York Times journalists who were missing in Libya from March 16–21, 2011. The New York Times reported on March 18, 2011 that Libya had agreed to free her and three colleagues: Anthony Shadid, Stephen Farrell and Tyler Hicks. The Libyan government released the four journalists on March 21, 2011. She reports that she was threatened with death and repeatedly groped during her captivity by the Libyan Army.
In November 2011, The New York Times wrote a letter of complaint on behalf of Addario to the Israeli government, after allegations that Israeli soldiers at the Erez Crossing had strip-searched and mocked her and forced her to go through an X-ray scanner three times despite knowing that she was pregnant. Addario reported that she had "never, ever been treated with such blatant cruelty." The Israeli Defence ministry subsequently issued an apology to both Addario and The New York Times.
The extensive exhibition In Afghanistan at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway has her photos of Afghan women juxtaposed with Tim Hetherington's photographs from American soldiers in the Korangal Valley.
Addario's recent bodies of work include "Finding Home" a year-long documentary following three Syrian refugee families and their stateless newborns over the course of one year as they await asylum in Europe for Time, The Changing Face of Saudi Women for National Geographic and "The Displaced" for The New York Times Magazine, a reportage documenting the lives of three children displaced from war in Syria, Ukraine, and South Sudan. Addario has spent the last four years documenting the plight of Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and Iraq for The New York Times, and she has covered the civil war in South Sudan, and Maternal Mortality in Assam, India, and Sierra Leone for Time. In 2015, Addario published her memoir It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War and Warner Bros bought the rights to a movie based on the memoir, to be directed by Steven Spielberg and to star Jennifer Lawrence as Addario. She also released a photography book in October 2018 titled “Of Love and War”.

Family

Addario is married to Paul de Bendern, a journalist with Reuters. They married in July 2009. They have one son, Lukas.

Publications by Addario