The first time I visited Afghanistan in May 2000, I was 26 years old, and the country was under Taliban rule. I went there to document Afghan women and landmine victims. Lynsey Addario Read Quote
By the time the United States went to war with Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, I had made three trips to the country. I covered the fall of the Taliban in Kandahar and have been returning routinely for the past 14 years. Lynsey Addario Read Quote
I started freelancing for the Associated Press. I had a great mentor there who sort of taught me everything. Lynsey Addario Read Quote
I never went to school for photography and started when I was pretty young. I was somewhere around 12 or 13. I started photographing as a hobby and carried that hobby through high school and university. Lynsey Addario Read Quote
If publications want to publish images and stories from a certain person, they should put that person on assignment, cover his or her expenses, make sure they have access to security briefings and experts, someone to administer first aid, etc. Lynsey Addario Read Quote
To me, it’s so much about doing your homework, going into a situation, getting to know the subject, making them feel comfortable, getting intimate access, getting access to all different aspects of people’s lives so that I am essentially telling an entire story and not just a single image. Lynsey Addario Read Quote
You have two options when you approach a hostile checkpoint in a war zone, and each is a gamble. The first is to stop and identify yourself as a journalist and hope that you are respected as a neutral observer. The second is to blow past the checkpoint and hope the soldiers guarding it don’t open fire on you. Lynsey Addario Read Quote
I think when I started going to war zones and started covering humanitarian issues, it became a calling because I realized I had a voice, and I can give people without a voice a voice… and now it is something that sits inside of me every day. Lynsey Addario Read Quote
I didn’t know a single female photographer who covered conflict who even had a boyfriend, much less a husband or a baby. Lynsey Addario Read Quote
