Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is In Conversation from Apple News. I'm Shamitza Basu. Today, inside the life of one of the world's leading war photographers. Chances are, if you've looked at the front page of any newspaper over the past two decades and seen images of war, conflict and uprisings from around the world, you have most likely seen a Lindsay Adario photo.
She's documented everything from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the Arab Spring and Libyan civil war to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
I'm constantly feeling for the people I cover. I'm constantly putting myself in their shoes.
She's been awarded the Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur Fellowship for her work.
Chapter 2: What experiences shaped Lynsey Addario's career as a war photographer?
And now a new National Geographic documentary film called Love and War looks not only at her extraordinary career, but also at her life at home in London with her husband and their two young sons.
I became a parent after I had been kidnapped twice. I had been thrown out of a car on a highway in Pakistan. I had been in a Taliban ambush, an ambush by Iraqi insurgents. I mean, the list goes on and on.
When I sat down with Lindsay, we talked about the dangerous work of photographing the realities of conflict zones and the difficult work of parenting and what she hopes this documentary captures about the complexity of both.
Mm-hmm. And I felt like we're in a time right now where journalism is really under attack. First of all, I think that people don't understand what it is we do and especially as frontline photographers and journalists. And I also made a decision to just be completely transparent and vulnerable and open because I know what I ask of my subjects.
And I did not think it would be helpful if I tried to paint a sort of pretty perfect picture because that's not at all who I am.
You know, it's striking to me how so many people, I think, are familiar with the feeling of understanding what they're looking at visually, even if they don't have the words for it. You know, people can look at an image, for example, a Robert Capa and be like, oh, I know that's that's totally a Robert Capa. That's a Dorothea Lange. What makes that a Lindsay Adario to you?
Oh, you're asking me to analyze my own photos.
Yeah.
I know how I might answer it because I know how I feel when I see your photography and I've seen it so much accompanying some of the most important journalism that I've read and consumed in the past years, you know.
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Chapter 3: How does Lynsey balance her high-risk work with motherhood?
And so more and more civilians were trying to evacuate. And so I went early one Sunday morning and was photographing people fleeing and carrying whatever they could on their backs. And a mortar round came in. And it came in a little bit off in the distance, the first one. And we dove for cover. We were sort of behind this cement wall.
And when we popped up again, another round came in and it came in a bit closer. And I know from 25 years of covering war that that's something called bracketing. It's where people who are positioning artillery basically gauge an area they want to target and they get closer and closer with every strike until they hit the target. And so the rounds were coming closer and closer.
And then the third round came in and literally we dove for cover. And I saw the flash of the mortar hit the gravel in front of me. And it was really probably 20 feet away. And I felt the spray of gravel on my neck. So when I popped back up, I didn't know if it had been shrapnel or gravel. And you hear me saying...
Am I bleeding? Am I bleeding?
No, no. That's my colleague, Andriy Dubchak, who I've covered most of the Ukraine war with. And we checked each other to make sure we were fine. And then once our security advisor, Steve Bungie, cleared for us to cross the street, we came upon this scene. I mean, it was very dusty, very chaotic. And I immediately clocked kind of these very small moon boots. And...
It dawned on me that it was a family or there were children because initially, for some reason in my head, I thought it was going to be a soldier. So I started photographing. Of course, my first instinct was to run because we were still under fire.
And I started photographing and I was thinking in my head, there's no way the New York Times will publish photos of dead civilians because I know I've been doing this a very long time. And I know where I come up against pushback of photographing scenes that are too graphic for the public or scenes that may seem disrespectful. Right.
So I photographed, and then I was sort of working my way around the scene, trying to find an angle that felt okay and not disrespectful. And then eventually we made a run for it, and there were mortars coming in on the way out. And after that, once we got into the car and sort of started heading back to the hotel, I immediately started messaging my editors saying...
The reason this picture is important is because I was in this attack. I survived the mortar attack, and I know that it was an intentional targeting of a civilian evacuation route. And so for me, it was really about the fact that I was there to witness the fact that this family was killed intentionally there. And that's why it was so important for me to publish this picture.
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Chapter 4: What ethical dilemmas does Lynsey face in her photography?
And so it was a very terrifying prospect for me. And so he said, look, I'll quit my job. I'll stay home. I'll raise the kids and you keep working. And I was skeptical, but actually he has fully kept his word. And so we've made this dynamic work. I continue to work. I'm home as much as I possibly can be. And I try to be as present as I can be when I'm home.
But certainly the opening sequence of the movie, it opens with me in Ukraine and then eventually you follow me home. And I had been away for months. seven weeks. And it's really hard to reenter into life with two small kids. At that point, my children were three and 10 years old. And just sort of what is the routine? Like, I had no idea. What time do they go to bed now? What are they eating?
What, you know, I when I'm exhausted physically and emotionally and have just like been documenting these very intense scenes and Alfred screaming, doesn't want to go to bed. Lucas wants to watch Netflix when it's past his bedtime. You know, it's like typical scenes that any parents go through at bedtime. But the fact is, like, you get out of practice.
I mean, it's like, you know, and so much changes in short amounts of time at those ages. Exactly.
I mean, kids change so quickly at that age. And I was open about that stuff. You know, I think that it's important to be open about it. And I'm sure people will criticize me, but the fact is, like, I do my best and this is the reality of our lives.
Yeah. Yeah. And there's something about, I mean, every scene of you coming home in the documentary, it's like your kids just throw themselves at you, for lack of better words. I mean, they miss you, clearly.
Yeah.
Yeah. There's even a scene where Alfred, at three years old, is trying to talk you out of working entirely. He's like, what if you just stayed home?
It's your last time. Ever going to work? Yeah. How about one day, and that's it? I mean, one day's a little difficult, but... How about three days, and that's it? Three, one day. One, two, three, and that's it. Go back. And I come back. Yeah. I mean, depends on where I go. Some places that I go, it's like really far away.
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