Lindsay Addario

And, you know, that is a reality.

No, I absolutely did not know what kind of photographer I wanted to be.

I had been photographing since I was about 12 or 13.

My dad gave me a camera that a client of his had given to him.

And I started kind of teaching myself how to photograph.

I read all these books with Ansel Adams photos on the cover of how to photograph and aperture and f-stop and speed and

And so I was kind of teaching myself how to photograph.

But by the time I got to Argentina, I had graduated from University of Wisconsin at Madison.

I had studied international relations and Italian, and I wanted to learn Spanish.

And so I went to Argentina.

And it was in Buenos Aires that I started becoming aware of photographs in the newspaper and how one could sort of marry photography and international relations.

And it was this revelation to me.

And it seems crazy, but actually I wasn't really aware that photojournalism as a profession existed.

And so I went into the English language newspaper and there were two men in kind of their 40s who would just chain smoke in the photo department and pull pictures off the AP wire.

And I went in and I just said, like, can I have a job?

And they looked at me and they were like, first of all, go learn Spanish and come back.

And so I was like, OK.

And I already spoke Italian, so I learned Spanish very, very quickly.

And I went back, like, I don't know, a month or two later, and I said, okay, like, I learned Spanish.

Can I have a job?