It's What I Do (Addario)

It's What I Do:  A Photographer's Life of Love and War
Lynsey Addario, 2015
Penguin Publishing Group
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594205378


Summary
War photographer Lynsey Addario’s memoir It’s What I Do is the story of how the relentless pursuit of truth, in virtually every major theater of war in the twenty-first century, has shaped her life.

What she does, with clarity, beauty, and candor, is to document, often in their most extreme moments, the complex lives of others. It’s her work, but it’s much more than that: it’s her singular calling.

Lynsey Addario was just finding her way as a young photographer when September 11 changed the world. One of the few photojournalists with experience in Afghanistan, she gets the call to return and cover the American invasion. She makes a decision she would often find herself making—not to stay home, not to lead a quiet or predictable life, but to set out across the world, face the chaos of crisis, and make a name for herself.

Addario finds a way to travel with a purpose. She photographs the Afghan people before and after the Taliban reign, the civilian casualties and misunderstood insurgents of the Iraq War, as well as the burned villages and countless dead in Darfur. She exposes a culture of violence against women in the Congo and tells the riveting story of her headline-making kidnapping by pro-Qaddafi forces in the Libyan civil war.

Addario takes bravery for granted but she is not fearless. She uses her fear and it creates empathy; it is that feeling, that empathy, that is essential to her work. We see this clearly on display as she interviews rape victims in the Congo, or photographs a fallen soldier with whom she had been embedded in Iraq, or documents the tragic lives of starving Somali children. Lynsey takes us there and we begin to understand how getting to the hard truth trumps fear.

As a woman photojournalist determined to be taken as seriously as her male peers, Addario fights her way into a boys’ club of a profession. Rather than choose between her personal life and her career, Addario learns to strike a necessary balance. In the man who will become her husband, she finds at last a real love to complement her work, not take away from it, and as a new mother, she gains an all the more intensely personal understanding of the fragility of life.

Watching uprisings unfold and people fight to the death for their freedom, Addario understands she is documenting not only news but also the fate of society. It’s What I Do is more than just a snapshot of life on the front lines; it is witness to the human cost of war. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—November 13, 1973
• Where—Norwalk, Connecticut, USA
• Education—University of Wisconsin, Madison
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in London, England, UK


Lynsey Addario is an American photojournalist living in the UK. Her work often focuses on conflicts and human rights issues, especially the role of women in traditional societies. Her book, It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War, was published in 2015.

Life and career
Addario graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1995 and began photographing professionally in 1996. She started with the Buenos Aires Herald in Argentina and then began freelancing for the Associated Press, with Cuba as a focus.

Starting in 2000, she began photographing life in Afghanistan under Taliban control and has since covered conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Darfur, the Congo, and Haiti. She has covered stories throughout the Middle East and Africa, visiting Darfur or neighboring Chad at least once a month from August 2004.

She has photographed for the New York Times, 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 went missing in Libya from March 16–21, 2011. On March 18, the Times reported that Libya had agreed to free all four: Addario, as well as Anthony Shadid, Stephen Farrell, and Tyler Hicks; they were released three days later. Addario reports that she was threatened with death and mistreated:

Physically, we were blindfolded and bound. In the beginning, our hands and feet were bound very tightly behind our backs, and my feet were tied with shoelaces. I was blindfolded most of the first three days, with the exception of the first six hours. I was punched in the face a few times and groped repeatedly.

She called her treatment "incredibly intense and violent. It was abusive throughout, both psychologically and physically."

Later that year, 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 Defense ministry subsequently issued an apology to both Addario and the New York Times.

Family
Addario is married to Paul de Bendern, a journalist with Reuters. They married in 2009 and have a son, born in 2011.*

Awards
Addario is the recipient of multiple awards, including the MacArthur Fellowship in 2009. Her work in Waziristan, Sept. 7, 2008, was part of work receiving the Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for International Reporting. She won the Getty Images Grant for Editorial photography in 2008 for her work in Darfur. She received the Infinity Award in 2002 by the International Center of Photography. (Author bio from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/20/2015 .)

* Read Addario's "What Can a Pregnant Journalist Cover? Everything," in the January 28, 2015 New York Times Magazine online.

Book Reviews
[An] unflinching memoir. [Addario’s] book, woven through with images from her travels, offers insight into international events and the challenges faced by the journalists who capture them.
Washington Post


Beautifully written and vividly illustrated with her images—which are stunningly cinematic, often strange, always evocative—the book helps us understand not only what would lead a young woman to pursue such a dangerous and difficult profession, but why she is so good at it. Lens to her eye, Addario is an artist of empathy, a witness not to grand ideas about human sacrifice and suffering, but to human beings, simply being.
Boston Globe
 

[A] richly illustrated memoir. [Addario] conveys well her unstated mission to stir the emotions of people like herself, born into relative security and prosperity, nudging them out of their comfort zones with visual evidence of horrors they might do something about. It is a diary of an empathetic young woman who makes understanding the wider world around her a professional calling.
Los Angeles Times

 
Addario’s narrative about growing up as one of four daughters born to hairdressers in Los Angeles and working her way up to being one of the world’s most accomplished photojournalists, male or female, is riveting. [She] thoughtfully shows how exhilarating and demanding it is to cover the most difficult assignments in the world. Addario is a shining example of someone who has been able to "have it all," but she has worked hard and absolutely suffered to get where she is. My hope is that she continues to live the life less traveled with her family, as I will be waiting for her next book with great anticipation.
San Francisco Chronicle


[Addario’s] ability to capture…vulnerability in her subjects, often in extreme circumstances, has propelled Addario to the top of her competitive field.
Associated Press

 
A rare gift: an intimate look into the personal and professional life of a war correspondent… a powerful read… This memoir packs a punch because of Addario’s personal risks. But some of the power in this book comes from the humanity she holds on to despite the horrors she witnesses. [It’s What I Do] should be read, processed and mulled over in its entirety….in [Addario’s] words and photos, readers will see that war isn’t simply a matter of black and white, of who’s right and who’s wrong. There are as many shades of gray as there are sides to every story.
Dallas Morning News


The opening scene of Lynsey Addario’s memoir sucker punches you like a cold hard fist. She illuminates the daily frustrations of working within the confines of what the host culture expects from a member of her sex and her constant fight for respect from her male journalist peers and American soldiers. Always she leads with her chin, whether she’s on the ground in hostile territory or discussing politics.
Entertainment Weekly

 
Addario astutely addresses the difficulties of being a woman in a “brutally competitive,” overwhelmingly male profession. She also articulates the passion that compels her and others to continue this difficult and dangerous work.... Addario’s memoir brilliantly succeeds...as an illuminating homage to photojournalism’s role in documenting suffering and injustice.
Publishers Weekly


Addario [is] a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and a Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting who came to everyone's attention when she was kidnapped by pro-Qaddafi forces during Libya's civil war. Here, she details the work she's done—photographing the Afghan people before and after the Taliban ascendancy...even as she tells her personal story.
Library Journal


Addario has written a page-turner of a memoir describing her war coverage and why and how she fell into—and stayed in—such a dangerous job. This "extraordinary profession"—though exhilarating and frightening, it "feels more like a commitment, a responsibility, a calling"—is what she does, and the many photographs scattered throughout this riveting book prove that she does it magnificently.
Booklist


(Starred review.) A remarkable journalistic achievement...crystalizes the last 10 years of global war and strife while candidly portraying the intimate life of a female photojournalist. Over the last decade, Addario has been periodically beaten, robbed, kidnapped, shot at and sexually assaulted from one end of the Middle East and North Africa to the other.... [I]nspiring as it is horrific.
Kirkus Reviews

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