Purchase
A Photographer's Life of Love and War
Penguin Press
February 2015
On Sale: February 5, 2015
368 pages
ISBN: 159420537X
EAN: 9781594205378
Kindle: B00L9B7CSM
Hardcover / e-Book
Add to Wish List
Non-Fiction Memoir
War photographer Lynsey Addario’s memoir It’s What I Do 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
makes a decision she would often find herself making—not to
stay home, not to lead a quiet or predictable life, but 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. Addario takes bravery for granted but she is not fearless.
She uses her fear and it creates empathy; it is that
feeling, that empathy, that is essential to her work. We see
this clearly on display as she interviews rape victims in
the Congo, or photographs a fallen soldier with whom she had
been embedded in Iraq, or documents the tragic lives of
starving Somali children. Lynsey takes us there and we begin
to understand how getting to the hard truth trumps fear. 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 society. 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.
Comments
No comments posted.
Registered users may leave comments.
Log in or register now!
| 
© 2003-2024 off-the-edge.net
all rights reserved Privacy Policy