“While covering war, there were days when I had boundless courage and there were days when I was terrified from the moment I woke up.”
Those are the words of Lynsey Addario, who has spent most of this century in some very dangerous places (e.g. Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur, the Congo, and Libya) taking pictures for the NY Times, National Geographic, Time magazine, and more. She has won a Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur Genius Grant, and has written about her experiences in “It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War.” When she joined me on my show, I asked her:
- about being taken captive by Qaddafi’s forces in Libya;
- how she gets pictures back to her editors from war-torn areas;
- whether she was ever treated as badly as Lara Logan was in the Middle East;
- about her pre-9/11 visit to Afghanistan to photograph women under Taliban rule;
- whether she has seen anything getting better in any of the countries she worked;
- how long it took to get used to the blood and ravages of war;
- whether, as a mother, she would want her child to do what she has done.
Listen to our conversation here.