For 25 years, Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Lynsey Addario has covered nearly every major conflict and humanitarian crisis of her generation, from Syria to Sudan to Ukraine. The dangers she encounters on assignment are increasingly serious; the Committee to Protect Journalists estimates that 2024 was the deadliest on record for journalists.
"We're in an era where journalists are routinely targeted and routinely killed," she says. "Journalism is equated with death now, in a way that it wasn't when I first started out."
Over the years, Addario's been kidnapped twice, thrown out of a car on a highway in Pakistan, and been ambushed, on two different occasions, by the Taliban and Iraqi insurgents. Still, she says, she sometimes finds parenting two young kids more challenging than reporting from a war zone.
"When I'm in a war zone, that is my focus and that's all I'm doing. ... I go in, I make calculations about the danger, I photograph, I try to tell stories, I go back to the hotel, I file, I try not to get hit in a missile strike," Addario says. "But with kids it's like I can't control when their emotions arise or when their needs arise and it's a full-time thing and it's very hard to do to have a full-time job as a parent."
Often, Addario's work makes it impossible to be physically present in the way other parents can be. "I'll sign up to be the mystery reader at school and I go and read to Alfred's class and then I have to cancel because I get stuck in the Darién Gap."
The new Disney+ documentary Love+War chronicles Addario's efforts to balance her roles as a mother and a journalist. She calls it a "constant negotiation" with her husband, Paul.
"It was sort of like our prenup. It's like: 'I don't want money. I want my freedom and I want my time to be able to work,'" she says. "We realized we love each other, we want a family, but I'm never going to be that person who's home all the time."
Interview highlights
On a close call she experienced in northern Iraq in March 2003
A lot of the civilians were saying, "Get out of here, get out of here. It's not safe." And of course, the one lesson I've learned in all my many years covering war is you always have to listen to the locals. And so I was standing with this other journalist, and I suddenly got this like feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I ran back to the car and shut the door and a huge mortar came like very close to us and our entire car was thrust forward and our driver just took off and sped like very, very fast and we drove for about 10 minutes to a safer area. ...
We stopped at a hospital and they were offloading the injured and there were people being treated and it was chaos ... and suddenly a taxi pulled up and this taxi driver said, "Is there a journalist around?" And I said, "Yeah." And he said, "Can anyone help me? I have the body of a journalist in my trunk." And I sort of doubled over and I felt like I was gonna throw up and I started sobbing and said, like, "I just want to go home. I don't want to end up in the back of a trunk one day. Like I don't want to die doing this job. I don't think I have it in me to be that brave."
On saying in the documentary that she's set up her life so that her husband is the main parent, so her kids have continuity should she be killed in the field
How could I not? I mean, look at what I do for a living. I'm constantly photographing people who are killed in war or people whose lives have been torn apart by war. And so part of being a war correspondent is that we're always making contingency plans and that is relevant to our own lives, and I think I go into these assignments knowing how dangerous they are. Obviously some are less dangerous than others, but just driving a car in war zones is dangerous. It's one of the most dangerous things we do. And in fact, ironically, the only time I've been injured to date was in a car accident, not on the front line. …
Obviously I don't want to get killed. I don't want to die. I don't want to die in war or anywhere else because I want to be here for my children and for my family. But life is full of surprises and anything can happen, not only in war but anywhere.
On feeling most alive when she's working
When I'm anywhere but behind the viewfinder of my camera actually taking photographs, I have a million things in my mind. I have a million things I want to be doing. I have a million things I am doing, and I'm very kind of scattered and stressed, whatever. And the place where it all comes together and I just focus and I am totally 100 percent present is when I'm working. ...
When I'm home, I'm happy to be home, I'm happy to be with my family, but I have one eye on the television — what is the story I should be covering next? I'm doing research, I'm spread very thin. But it is true that when I start to actually go out to take photos and I'm in a situation where I'm interviewing someone, capturing their story, making pictures, I feel most like myself, like where I need to be. And that's a hard thing to say out loud because most people will be like, "Well, that makes you a horrible mother … you should never say that out loud." But that's just me and that is a reality.
On maintaining hope, despite seeing the worst of humanity and suffering
Images can move people, can educate people, can enlighten people, can flip misconceptions, can bridge people. I still believe in photojournalism and even though I've seen so many horrific things and I've seen evil and I've seen things that I just never thought a human being would be capable of and I've heard testimonies, I still see extraordinary beauty and generosity and resilience and love and hope and I think so long as the people I'm photographing have that spirit, I will have that spirit. … I can't predict how I'll feel in a year, in five years, and 10 years, I have no idea. But I still have hope and belief in photojournalism.
On her next assignment
I'm looking at Sudan and then I'm also looking at some stories in the United States. … So I haven't had that conversation yet, primarily because I just came home from a three-week trip and I just hesitant to say, "I'm gonna leave again and I'm going to Sudan." So I'm waiting for the right time. It never feels like the right time, but they're hard conversations when I have to say I'm leaving.
Sam Briger and Anna Bauman produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
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