Loading summary
Transcript73 lines
- [00:04]
A
This is in conversation from Apple News. I'm Shemitah 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 Addario 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.
- [00:44]
B
I'm constantly feeling for the people I cover. I'm constantly putting myself in their shoes.
- [00:51]
A
She's been awarded the Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur Fellowship for her work. And now a new National Geographic documentary film called Love and War looks not only at her extraordinary career, but but also at her life at home in London with her husband and their two young sons.
- [01:07]
B
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.
- [01:21]
A
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.
- [01:37]
B
I have been doing this for so long, and usually I am the one asking people to open up their lives to me. And I go in and I spend hours at a time and also documenting, like, some of the most intimate moments and vulnerable moments that people have. And I felt like we're in a time right now where journalism is really under attack. You know, 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.
- [02:29]
A
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 totally a Robert Cap. That's a Dorothea Lange. What makes that a Lindsay Addario to you?
- [02:51]
B
Oh, you're asking me to analyze my own photos.
- [02:55]
A
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.
- [03:06]
B
Thank you. I. I guess it would be wide angle. I generally shoot wide angle. I get very, very close to my subjects. I use natural light. I don't use a flash. I try to get sort of very intimate scenes. I often photograph women and children, not exclusively, and I'm trying to capture emotion and evoke emotion. So I think, I hope that sort of gives some of the parameters, of course, while telling a story.
- [03:36]
A
Yeah. You speak in the documentary about what drives you and what drives your work, and a lot of it is impact. You talk about the hope that you have that your images will spark change, that they'll move policy, that they'll shift people's perspective and understanding of conflicts around the world. And in fact, the documentary opens with a really, really interesting example of exactly that. It's a deadly mortar strike in Ukraine, early days of the conflict, where Russia attacked Ukraine. And you photographed a family that was killed while evacuating on what was supposed to be a safe evacuation route for civilians. Tell us a little bit of that story and some of the ethical decisions that came up in not only taking that photograph, but in how you advocated for the New York Times to publish it.
- [04:27]
B
Sure. So it was March 6, very early on in the war. It was a few weeks after Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine. And one of the things, of course, I have to do as a conflict photographer is go in and try to cover as many different elements of a story that I possibly can. And so people fleeing from missile strikes, from mortar attacks is something that I'm often looking for because it shows the urgency and the impact on civilians. And so I went to the Irpin Bridge. It's a bridge that separated the suburbs of Irpin and Bucha from Kyiv. And the bridge had been intentionally broken by the Ukrainian military in order to stop and slow the Russian advance. And so civilians who were fleeing from that area, that was essentially not under siege, but it was definitely the Russian positions were getting closer and closer, and there was a lot of fighting in Bucha and Irpin. 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 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 20ft 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?
- [06:39]
A
Am I bleeding? No.
- [06:40]
B
No. That's my colleague Andrey 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 Bunge, cleared for us to cross the street, we came upon the 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, 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. 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 were 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. And that's why it was so important for me to publish this picture. Very luckily, the New York Times stood behind it. They did end up putting it on the front page. And it was used. I mean, it was used to rally the world essentially to stand behind Ukraine in those initial weeks and months of the war, to give them weapons to fight against the Russian invasion, because it.
- [08:49]
A
So starkly contrasted the message coming from Russian leadership, which was that they were denying attacking civilians. This is the idea of how images can impact people's understanding and tell a whole story. And even in the documentary itself, you ended up speaking with some family of the people who were killed and ultimately hearing them say how important it was to see those images get published. What did that feel like for you?
- [09:15]
B
I mean, that was actually the father of the two children killed and the husband of Tatiana, the wife. And to be face to face with the only surviving member of this family, and to know that it was my picture that basically informed him of his family's death. I mean, he recognized the luggage in the photograph when it appeared on Twitter. And he was still making his way back from Russia, where he had been with his mother, taking care of his sick mother. And to know that I was responsible for capturing that horrific moment in perpetuity for this man who lost everything was excruciating. I mean, it was horrific for me because I felt so guilty, you know, and I felt so horrible. And what you don't see in the documentary, of course, is me sobbing, stopping hysterically, you know, while Andrew Kramer, the New York Times journalist, was interviewing him and saying, you know, if we could have asked your permission, if we could have found you in time, what would you have said? And he said, you know, yes, I would have given permission. The world needs to see what's happening in Ukraine. And ultimately, I went back and interviewed him for a new book I'm writing, but he said, I don't want my family to be another statistic. You know, for me, it's important there is a face and name to my children and my wife.
- [10:42]
A
You know, it's funny that you say you were sobbing off camera, because there are many times in the documentary where we do see you get emotional about what you're experiencing, what you're seeing, what you're hearing. Sometimes for good situations and sometimes for bad situations. You're clearly moved in your work, and you allow yourself to be moved by your work. What a gift and what a burden, right?
- [11:05]
B
Yeah. I mean, I, I. There's this image of the war photographer that is completely stoic, you know, and there are many people, I mean, Jim knocked away. There's the movie War Photographer, and he's like, perfect white shirt, you know, his equipment's always clean. He's emotionless on Camera. And, you know, I'm basically the opposite. I have like bubblegum wrappers attached to my lenses. Like, I'm a disaster when I'm shooting. I'm. I'm crying, I'm emotional.
- [11:33]
A
I'm like, you're in the documentary, you're mic'd up and there are moments when.
- [11:36]
B
You'Re like, like, oh, oh, I know. I swear a lot.
- [11:39]
A
I hate this.
- [11:40]
B
I know.
- [11:40]
A
I remember hearing you say, like, oh, I hate this, I hate this. I don't want to do this. Sometimes you're literally saying that out loud. I don't know how aware you were before you were mic'd up in this way, but I mean, understandably, you're in these really intense situations, literally dangerous situation, life threatening situations sometimes.
- [11:55]
B
Yeah. I mean, you hear when I'm like under mortar attack that I'm swearing a lot, which, you know, I'm sorry if that's offensive, but a lot of this is very raw and I think war is raw and so there is no point in censoring it. But I do think I have a huge amount of empathy. I'm trying to understand what it would feel like if, I don't know, me and my sisters were separated because of war, or if my fiance had only three days to leave the front line to come and marry me and then he had to turn back and go to Dunbas and who knew if he would survive? And so I think I'm always thinking about. About what must it feel like. And I think that makes me a better photographer in the sense that I try to get the emotion of my subjects, but I also try to empathize and feel what it feels like. And I think ultimately that is captured in the film. I'm a little embarrassed by how much it's captured, but it is a reality.
- [12:54]
A
Yeah. One thing that I would say if I were asked to define what makes this a Lindsay Addario. I do think one of the defining features of your work has been your sensitivity toward capturing women. So often you have managed to seek out women in places where their stories are not being highlighted in major ways in the film. It gets into a little bit about your photography around maternal health and mortality rates in Sierra Leone.
- [13:21]
B
Yep.
- [13:21]
A
And the story that you followed where a woman died giving birth and you were present for that and you were documenting that. Can you tell me a little bit about that story? But also just, I mean, the sensitivity of covering these moments of extreme vulnerability, of death even.
- [13:41]
B
Yeah, it's really difficult. That story was after I was named a MacArthur fellow so I won a MacArthur in 2009. And what I wanted to do with that, like, unbelievable recognition and money that they give with the fellowship was to focus on a story that I wasn't really getting assigned as a photographer. So I started looking into different stories and became aware of maternal mortality, and I really felt like I wanted to learn more and document that. And so I went to Sierra Leone as one of the first places that I would work with the MacArthur Fellowship. And I actually went to this Magbaraka Government Hospital. It was an area with a province with very high maternal death rates. And the reason for that is that there was one doctor in the entire province to treat everybody, not just maternity patients. And there was very little prenatal and postnatal care. There was a horrible road network. A lot of this is in the wake of a war in Sierra Leone, so the infrastructure is broken. So I went and literally, one of the first people I met was Mama Sise, and she was pregnant with twins. She delivered the first baby in her village, and her sister, who was a midwife, was so worried about her pregnancy that she actually sent an ambulance to collect her sister. To get to that ambulance, Mama Sise had to take a canoe across a river to the ambulance and then do like a six hour bus ride over bumpy roads because as she.
- [15:16]
A
She delivered the first baby, as you said, at Home Care Village. But the second baby.
- [15:21]
B
The second baby, right. The second baby wouldn't come out.
- [15:25]
A
Yeah.
- [15:25]
B
And so she needed help. By the time I met her, she was exhausted. She was scared to push. The first baby was out and. Okay. And so we talked for, like, actually while she rehydrated. And, you know, the midwives were looking after her and we talked about her life. And then eventually she delivered the second baby and she started hemorrhaging. And this was one of the first births I had covered. So I'm watching the blood come out and I kept saying, like, I think she's bleeding too much. And the midwives were like, no, it's fine. It's normal. And I got really nervous, and my instinct told me it was not okay. And so I put my cameras down and I ran to find the one doctor in this government hospital, and he was in surgery. And I actually, like, put on scrubs and went into the surgical ward and was like, I think there's a woman dying. And he was like, I'm a little busy. And so by the time he came out of surgery, the midwives had carried Mama Sise to an area closer to where he was in surgery and she was pronounced dead. And I just could not believe that this death could have been totally preventable in a functioning hospital with a great medical staff and certain medication. And so it was published. Time magazine published the story, over eight pages. It coincided with this very big women's conference in Washington, D.C. time sent 3,000 copies of the magazine to the conference. Someone from Merck, the pharmaceutical company, picked up a bunch of copies, distributed it. Eventually, sometime after, at one of their boards where they were discussing corporate responsibility, and not only because of this story, but certainly as an influence on what they were discussing, they ended up starting Merc for mothers and put aside $500 million to fight maternal death impact.
- [17:25]
A
The thing that you say you seek most in your work.
- [17:27]
B
Yeah, I mean, it was one of the few times in my profession where someone came to me and said, I think you really need to know this as the photographer that has impacted one of our program. And that rarely happens. You know, I often kind of move through my work and life without knowing the impact. I get emails, sometimes I get messages, but it's rare that I hear that feedback. That was really a gift for me.
- [17:56]
A
You know, photojournalism obviously has been such a male dominated field for so many years. Not to say that important work hasn't always been done by women photojournalists too. But I mean, you talk about this a little bit in the documentary, but not a whole lot. Actually, this, this idea of you kind of allude to some of the limits of being a woman in some of these conflict zones, maybe sometimes being told you can't go to certain areas, but clearly womanhood is also some kind of pass for you that you see it in that way. It allows you an invitation into certain spaces that otherwise you may not get.
- [18:33]
B
Yeah, I think it allows me an invitation into certain spaces. Like when I'm working in Afghan and men and women are separated by gender. Right. So I have access as a foreign woman, I have access to Afghan women, but I also have access to men because we're seen as sort of this third sex, like a neutral gender where we can access both men and women. And that is really a gift because my male colleagues cannot go into private homes and see women unveiled or living a traditional lifestyle. And so I do think that the other thing that tends to be a gift is that in most parts of the world, women are underestimated and kind of dismissed. And like, oh, she's not a threat, it's just a woman. And when I was younger, it was even more so because they just saw me as this like young woman who, what could she possibly know or do? And, and I really was able to move around under the radar. And that for any journalist, any photographer, is incredible. I mean, it's exactly what we look for because we're looking for authenticity in life. We're looking for scenes that capture you reality without people paying attention to us. And so that has also been really helpful.
- [19:50]
A
One of the funniest things that you said in the documentary was at some point there's a scene of you at home and there's some kind of chaos going on. I don't know, your toddler is having a meltdown or something and you just.
- [20:02]
B
Go, oh my God, kids are so much harder than war.
- [20:06]
A
Which is funny on many. But tell me about the war at home, what's going on at home? And we see this insight into your family life. You've got two boys, your husband is at home, he is really involved with the kids and holding it all down while you're, while you're away on assignment. I mean, what is family life like for you and what was important for people to understand in watching the documentary about your family life?
- [20:33]
B
Yeah, I think, look, when my husband and I met, my husband Paul is Swedish and, and when we met, he knew what my life was about. I mean, I, and he's a journalist. He was a journalist with Reuters for 16 years. He lived all over the world. He knew what dedication journalism requires and how there's a lot of unpredictability. You know, a lot of this is last minute decisions to have to go somewhere. And when I'm on a story, I can't determine when that story ends. And so when we talked about having children, I was ambivalent, of course, because I, you know, at that time I didn't know any women were photographers who had children, much less who were married. 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, 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 seven weeks and it's really hard to reenter into life with two small kids at that point. My children were 3 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, when I'm exhausted physically and emotionally, and have just, like, been documenting these very intense scenes. Alfred screaming, doesn't wanna 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.
- [22:29]
A
I mean, it's like, you know, and so much changes in short amounts of time at those ages.
- [22:34]
B
Exact. 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.
- [22:49]
A
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.
- [23:02]
B
Yeah.
- [23:02]
A
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?
- [23:09]
B
It's your last time ever going to work.
- [23:12]
A
Yeah. How about one day?
- [23:16]
B
Not two? I mean, one day is a little difficult, but how about three days? Not two. Three.
- [23:27]
A
One, two, three, and that's it.
- [23:30]
B
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.
- [23:39]
A
So if I go, it's a very, very sweet scene. He's like, I don't really get this, but you could just stay home.
- [23:45]
B
He's really funny and he's really attached to me, which is so strange because I've been traveling, you know, since he was small.
- [23:53]
A
I mean, you talk in the documentary a little bit about how when Lucas was born, you felt a sort of external pressure to change the way you work. What kinds of pressures were you feeling? How much was coming from you internally versus externally?
- [24:09]
B
Well, I think I put an unbelievable amount of pressure on myself. First of all, I think with that as a starting point, I am constantly pushing myself to work over and above because I knew that I had just become a mother. I did not want to lose my job as a photographer who could go off and travel still. And so I was really pushing to be out there. But there was a point, sort of when Lucas was about 4 and 5, you know, actually, 3, 4, 5, when my availability required, like, a day's notice, basically, where I had to set up childcare for a few weeks. And in addition to my husband and just the logistics of being a parent, you know, I had an editor who was annoyed at that, clearly, and started making decisions about my safety and not sending me to certain wars and on the big stories. And one day just told me outright, I'm not sending you to Mosul because you're a mother. And I think, you know, things like that. For a woman or a parent who's already processing the life changes and the. And the work changes, to have someone say to you to your face like, you will no longer be the photographer you are because you've chosen to have a child was pretty. Pretty striking and pretty unbelievable. I mean, I. I actually had to kind of, like, fact check the conversation the following morning with another woman who was there, and I was like, was I hallucinating? Did that conversation really take place? And. Yeah, I mean, it's one thing to think that's happening, and it's another thing to have an editor actually articulate that.
- [25:54]
A
Yeah, yeah. And it's one thing for you to feel that yourself versus have someone impose it on you or take that agency from you.
- [26:02]
B
Exactly.
- [26:02]
A
I mean, did you ever feel that sense yourself internally? Did you feel yourself gravitating toward or away from certain assignments once you became a parent?
- [26:13]
B
Yeah, but I think that we have to sort of set up the fact that 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. And so naturally, I was coming to a point where I was trying to sort of navigate how my career would look moving forward. It was right after being held captive for a week in Libya by Gaddafi loyalists that I got pregnant. And so there was sort of a lot going on. It wasn't just like, you know, I had this clear path. I became a parent, and suddenly I stopped, you know. So I think for me, it was always about calculating the danger and what is the assignment. And so, for examp, the war in Syria was really kind of blowing up after I got pregnant. And when I had Lucas and I made a decision not really to cover it because there was so much kidnapping of foreigners. And at that point, I had been kidnapped twice already. And so I just thought, I cannot do this to my loved ones. Like, I cannot put my family through this again. If I get captured Again, and that was by isis. And, you know, the chances of surviving a kidnapping like that were slim. And so, you know. Yes. I'm always thinking about the risks. I'm always thinking about not only being a parent, but being a daughter and being a wife. You know, it's all of these things combined.
- [27:43]
A
At some point in the documentary, you say I suck as a parent, I suck as a journalist. I'm always compromising.
- [27:50]
B
Yeah.
- [27:50]
A
That is such a relatable sentiment for so many working parents. Add to it the layer of danger involved in a lot of your work. I guess I just felt like there was something really real and really revealing about hearing you say that. A lot of parents that I've spoken to who work also and had to kind of reinvent themselves in some way after having kids talk about the benefits of doing that and what they learned about themselves. I mean, what have you learned about yourself through the experience of becoming a parent and continuing to embrace your work?
- [28:23]
B
I mean, I guess I've learned. It's not something that I've learned because to me, family has always been extraordinarily important. You know, family. I grew up in a very close Italian American family. You see all your sisters and your parents. Exactly, exactly. And so to me, family has always been everything. But to create my own family with my husband has been a huge learning curve. It's really about your children now. You know, for me, it's about my kids and making sure that they're happy, that they're safe. Parenting is the hardest thing I've ever done. I mean, and I've covered almost a dozen wars, and definitely parenting is much harder.
- [29:06]
A
You know, just to come back to the work and the impact, the idea of impact. You've talked about how it feels difficult to hold people's attention in today's news environment, in today's technology environment, social media, information environment, maybe. And you said it in the film, you said it's my job to get people to pay attention.
- [29:29]
B
Yeah.
- [29:29]
A
Long past the time when the spotlight has moved on. In an era where we are so saturated, especially with information, but also with images and sometimes with graphic images online, in news contexts, but also on social media. How do you think about that kind of impact now compared with, say, 20 years ago? Fifteen. Twenty years ago?
- [29:54]
B
Yeah. I mean, it's something I grapple with all the time, because when I started out, the journalists on the ground and people like me were the only platform for people who wanted to share their stories or to document what was happening on the ground. For example, the first time I went into Afghanistan, I was probably one of a handful of journalists who went in under the Taliban over that year. So that information becomes not only exclusive but fundamental to informing the public as to what's going on on the ground. I think now we see people there are citizen journalists, people are documenting their own stories real time. For me, that doesn't take away from the importance of doing my work and the importance of being on the ground. Because there's no substitute for having a journalist with the skills I have to fact check, to gather information, to do solid reporting, to sit down and have a one on one conversation with someone and record their testimony. You know, AI still can't do. So for me, it's really about being there, being on the ground, gaining the trust of the subjects and then having that come through in my photographs and in my work. And so you had mentioned before you feel like my pictures are really intimate and that for me it's about that I want to be able to make pictures that will stop the reader, stop people in their tracks, make them ask what's happening in this photographs, you know, what is the story that is going on? And to also be a little bit ahead of the curve. You know, for example, we've just started talking about the war in Sudan. That's been going on for over 18 months. So, for example, the first half of this year, I spent most of the year going in and out of Khartoum, Darfur, neighboring Chad. And that was important to me. And now, in fact, we spoke with.
- [31:45]
A
Ann Applebaum on this program about her reporting is on Sudan.
- [31:49]
B
Exactly, exactly. And so that story was sort of very prescient and very important because now people are talking about it and they can go back and read that amazing article that sort of lays out what's happening right now.
- [32:04]
A
Yeah. Is there a story that you are angling to cover in this moment? You're feeling urgency around.
- [32:13]
B
I'm looking at going back to Sudan. I think that the recent attacks in Al Fasher are horrific. And the fact that more than 250,000 people were living basically under siege and are now trying to flee for their lives, I think it's a really important story. Of course, I still think Ukraine is an incredible important story. I've been working there for three years, so it's harder and harder for me in Ukraine to find new angles to cover. But right now I'm looking at Sudan and I'm looking at America, which, you know, there's so much happening here at home. And I've lived abroad for 25 years. And so when I come home, I sometimes feel like a foreigner, you know? But I do love the idea of going into a new place in the US and talking to people with an open mind, an open heart, talking to people the way I do all of my work.
- [33:08]
A
Lindsay, thank you so much for your time and for this insight into your personal and professional work. It's really nice to see.
- [33:16]
B
Thank you so much.
- [33:21]
A
Love and War is streaming now on Disney plus and Hulu. We'll include a link to it on our Show Notes page. And every weekend you can find new episodes of Apple News in conversation in the Apple News app. Just tap on the Audio tab, that's the little headphones at the bottom to find.