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

Review

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

"In the perfect light of a crystal-clear morning, I stood outside a putty-colored cement hospital near Ajdabiya, a small city on Libya's northern coast, more than five hundred miles east of Tripoli. Several other journalists and I were looking at a car that had been hit during a morning air strike. Its back window had been blown out, and human remains were splattered all over the backseat. There was part of a brain on the passenger seat; shards of skull were embedded in the rear parcel shelf. Hospital employees in white medical uniforms carefully picked up the pieces and placed them in a bag. I picked up my camera to shoot what I had shot so many times before, then put it back down, stepping aside to let the other photographers have their turn. I couldn't do it that day."

From the opening lines of her extraordinarily riveting memoir, Lynsey Addario gives readers a rare, intimate view of her life as a photojournalist --- in this instance, while on assignment in Libya in March of 2011 covering a revolution that quickly transformed into war. The award-winning veteran whose accolades include a MacArthur Fellowship and Pulitzer Prize tells the remarkable story of her development as a photographer and her career as a freelancer covering stories for the Associated Press, The New York Times and National Geographic Magazine from remote and often dangerous locations in Asia, the Middle East and Africa in the post-9/11 years. After traveling to Cuba, India, Afghanistan and Mexico City, she writes, "I became comfortable in places most people found frightening, and as I saw more of the world, my courage and curiosity grew."

"Featuring over 90 photographs, IT’S WHAT I DO is powerfully affecting. Addario’s candid stories are dramatic, empathic and full of compassion."

As a self-taught artist, Addario found early inspiration in the photographic works of Robert Mapplethorpe (studying his composition and use of light) and Sebastião Salgado, whose detailed, texturally rich images of impoverished workers toiling under abject conditions had emotional resonance. Addario writes, "The photos were an enigma to me: how had he captured his subjects' dignity?"

While earning a living teaching English in Argentina, Addario wandered the streets of Buenos Aires, photographing tango dancers and café life. On Thursdays, when a group of mothers stood vigil at the Plaza de Mayo (in protest of the disappearances of their children during Argentina’s Dirty War), Addario “tried to frame their pain and unresolved sadness” through her viewfinder.

In the late 1990s, with "groundless confidence," Addario marched into the editorial offices of the New York Post, the New York Daily News and the Associated Press, and found steady work as a stringer covering protests, parades and press conferences, and eagerly pursuing unique assignments such as profiling the transgender-prostitute community in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. Addario credits the AP staff weekend editor, Bebeto, for teaching her how to compose, read light (stressing the “power of the sun at a long angle in the sky just after sunrise or before sunset”) and, most importantly, the art of patience. “Bebeto taught me to linger in a place long enough, without photographing, so that people grew comfortable with me and the camera’s presence.”

Addario heeded her mentor’s words of advice while on assignment in Iraq after 9/11 and Saddam Hussein was deposed. “Observe, be patient” was a meaningful reminder while chronicling families visiting the mass graves containing the bodies of their loved ones, victims of Hussein’s brutal regime. “Could the anguish of seeing a loved one after more than a decade --- decayed in a plastic bag, with nothing more than strands of fabric for identification --- even translate into a single frame?”

Featuring over 90 photographs, IT’S WHAT I DO is powerfully affecting. Addario’s candid stories are dramatic, empathic and full of compassion. Of her profession, she writes, “It is the way we make a living, but it feels more like a responsibility, or a calling.” She speaks of having a raison d'être, adding, “We bear witness to history, and influence policy. And yet we also pay a steep price for this commitment.”

Reviewed by Miriam Tuliao on February 20, 2015

It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War
by Lynsey Addario

  • Publication Date: February 5, 2015
  • Genres: Nonfiction, Photography
  • Hardcover: 384 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
  • ISBN-10: 159420537X
  • ISBN-13: 9781594205378