It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War - Softcover

Addario, Lynsey

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143128418 ISBN 13: 9780143128410

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2016

Synopsis

“An unflinching memoir . . . [that] offers insight into international events and the challenges faced by the journalists who capture them.” —The Washington Post

War photographer Lynsey Addario’s memoir 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 decides 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.
 
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 societies. 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.

About this title

Review:

An Amazon Best Book of the Month for February 2015: “Why do you do this?” is the central question Lynsey Addario answers in her new memoir It’s What I Do—and she asks it not just for the reader, but it seems for herself. Addario is a MacArthur “Genius” grant recipient and was part of the team that won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting (covering the Taliban in Afghanistan with Dexter Filkins ) but her story often underscores her insecurities in her profession and personal life. Even with her numerous accolades, she worries about being forgotten, missing the breaking story and not being taken seriously as a woman. It’s a frank, and refreshingly, candid look into a successful professional photojournalist at the top of her game but it never romanticizes the risks that are necessary to bring us her images. Her story is inspiring, heartbreaking and an eye opening look at what it takes to reveal events from the other side of the world. –Amy Huff

About the Author:

Lynsey Addario is an American photojournalist whose work appears regularly in The New York Times, National Geographic, and Time magazine. She has covered conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Darfur, and the Congo, and has received numerous awards, including the MacArthur Genius Grant. In 2009, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize as part of the New York Times team for International Reporting.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0143128418
• ISBN 13: 9780143128410
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368