Lynsey Addario > Quotes

“Journalists can sound grandiose when they talk about their profession. Some of us are adrenaline junkies; some of us are escapists; some of us do wreck our personal lives and hurt those who love us most. This work can destroy people. I have seen so many friends and colleagues become unrecognizable from trauma: short-tempered, sleepless, and alienated from friends. But after years of witnessing so much suffering in the world, we find it hard to acknowledge that lucky, free, prosperous people like us might be suffering, too. We feel more comfortable in the darkest places than we do back home, where life seems too simple and too easy. We don’t listen to that inner voice that says it is time to take a break from documenting other people’s lives and start building our own. Under it all, however, are the things that sustain us and bring us together: the privilege of witnessing things that others do not; an idealistic belief that a photograph might affect people’s souls; the thrill of creating art and contributing to the world’s database of knowledge. When I return home and rationally consider the risks, the choices are difficult. But when I am doing my work, I am alive and I am me. It’s what I do. I am sure there are other versions of happiness, but this one is mine.”
― Lynsey Addario, It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

“Photography has shaped the way I look at the world; it has taught me to look beyond myself and capture the world outside.”
― Lynsey Addario, It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

“The truth was, the difference between a studio photographer and a photojournalist was the same as the difference between a political cartoonist and an abstract painter; the only thing the two had in common was the blank page.”
― Lynsey Addario, It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

“I became fascinated by the notion of dispelling stereotypes or misconceptions through photography, of presenting the counterintuitive.”
― Lynsey Addario, It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

“I found that the camera was a comforting companion. It opened up new worlds, and gave me access to people’s most intimate moments. I discovered the privilege of seeing life in all its complexity, the thrill of learning something new every day. When I was behind a camera, it was the only place in the world I wanted to be.”
― Lynsey Addario, It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

“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.”
― Lynsey Addario, It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

“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.”
― Lynsey Addario, It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

“I choose to live in peace and witness war—to experience the worst in people but to remember the beauty.”
― Lynsey Addario, It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

“because in a sense, our work was our life. It defined who we were, it wasn’t just a job we did for a living, and I needed to hold on to that for as long as I could.”
― Lynsey Addario, It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

“Photography has shaped the way I look at the world; it has taught me to look beyond myself and capture the world outside. It’s also taught me to cherish the life I return to when I put the camera down. My work makes me better able to love my family and laugh with my friends.”
― Lynsey Addario, It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

“The truth is that few of us are born into this work. It is something we discover accidentally, something that happens gradually. We get a glimpse of this unusual life and this extraordinary profession, and we want to keep doing it, no matter how exhausting, stressful, or dangerous it becomes. It is the way we make a living, but it feels more like a responsibility, or a calling. It makes us happy, because it gives us a sense of purpose. We bear witness to history, and influence policy.”
― Lynsey Addario, It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

“But I have faith, as I’ve always had, that if I work hard enough, care enough, and love enough in all areas of my life, I can create and enjoy a full life.”
― Lynsey Addario, It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

“He taught me to stand on a street corner or in a room for an hour—or two or three—waiting for that great epiphany of a moment, the wondrous combination of subject, light, and composition. And something else: the inexplicable magic that made the image dive right into your heart.”
― Lynsey Addario, It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

“I wanted to make people think, to open their minds, to give them a full picture of what was happening in Iraq so they can decide whether they supported our presence there.”
― Lynsey Addario

“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.”
― Lynsey Addario, It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

“If I took a month off, I was likely to be replaced by one of the other, say, two hundred freelancers vying to get my assignments. If I took six months off to have a baby, I believed I would be written off by my editors. I was in a man’s profession.”
― Lynsey Addario, It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

“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.”
― Lynsey Addario, It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

“More than anything, he taught me the art of patience. Cameras introduce tension. People are aware of the power of a camera, and this instinctively makes most subjects uncomfortable and stiff. But Bebeto taught me to linger in a place long enough, without photographing, so that people grew comfortable with me and the camera’s presence.”
― Lynsey Addario, It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

“This was the first time I had to decide between my personal and professional lives. Some part of me knew, or hoped, that real love should complement my work, not take away from it.”
― Lynsey Addario, It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

“With my subjects—the thousands of people I have photographed—I have shared the joy of survival, the courage to resist oppression, the anguish of loss, the resilience of the oppressed, the brutality of the worst of men and the tenderness of the best.”
― Lynsey Addario, It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

“I had the privilege to travel and to walk away from hardship when it became too much to bear. Most people on earth didn’t have an exit door to walk away from their own lives.”
― Lynsey Addario, It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

“Before I gave birth to Lukas, I hadn’t truly understood that painful, consuming, I-will-do-anything-to-save-this-human-being kind of love.”
― Lynsey Addario, It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

“He spoke Spanish, English, Italian, and just enough of every other language to be able to charm women around the world.”
― Lynsey Addario, It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

“Stay in Latin America, learn photography, and make all your professional mistakes in Argentina,” he said, “because if you make one mistake in New York, no one will give you a second chance.”
― Lynsey Addario, It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

“I was desperate. I spent almost two months traipsing around the mountains of one of the world’s most dangerous places, and as the piece went to press, my reporting was being questioned, some of my strongest images were being removed from the layout, and the editor in chief decided uncharacteristically that he would not run a slide show.”
― Lynsey Addario, It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

“the Christian Science Monitor and the AP. I wrote to the photo desk of the New York Times several times, offering myself up as a stringer, and each time my e-mail went unanswered. I wrote directly to the New York Times correspondents based in India and asked if I could shoot anything for them. They told me they took their own pictures while on assignment. I would keep trying. I felt that if I could only shoot for the New York Times—to me, the newspaper that most influenced American foreign policy and that employed the world’s best journalists—I would reach the pinnacle of my career.”
― Lynsey Addario, It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

“I am sure there are other versions of happiness, but this one is mine.”
― Lynsey Addario, It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

“I look at women like that and I just can't believe it never gets any better for so many people on this planet. When I look at this book, this body of work, I think, Why are we so lucky to have born in a country of no war? Why am I so lucky? That's what I always come back to. That's what still plagues me.”
― Lynsey Addario, Of Love & War

“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.”
― Lynsey Addario, It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

“I kneeled about eight feet from the scene and photographed, shocked by what I was witnessing. What happened to “liberating the Iraqis”? I was waiting for one of the soldiers to step in and stop the madness when I noticed an old woman in an abaya in the right corner of my frame. She was about sixty years old. She raised a propane tank over her head and smashed it on a crouching soldier’s neck. I kept shooting. No one even noticed me. The Americans didn’t understand the value of honor and respect in an Arab culture. Young American soldiers, many of whom had never traveled abroad before, much less to a Muslim country, didn’t realize that a basic familiarity with Arab culture might help their cause. During night patrols, fresh-faced Americans in their late teens and early twenties would stop cars jam-packed with Iraqi family members—men, women, and children—shine their flashlights into the cars, and scream, “Get the fuck out of the car!” Armed to the teeth, they busted into private homes late in the night, pushing the men to the floor, screaming in their faces in English, and zip-tying their wrists while questioning them—often without interpreters and while the children stood, terrified, in the doorway. They would shine their flashlights on women in nightgowns, unveiled, track their dirty boots through people’s homes, soil their carpets and their dignity. For an Arab man, foreigners seeing his wife uncovered brought shame and dishonor to the family, and it merited revenge.”
― Lynsey Addario, It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War