AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Lynsey Addario has spent decades covering war as a photojournalist. Her photos have captured the reality of conflicts around the world from Afghanistan to Ukraine. They have led the front page of The New York Times and won her a Pulitzer Prize. Now, her work and her life are the subject of the new documentary "Love+War."
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "LOVE+WAR")
LYNSEY ADDARIO: So much happens in war that is meant to never be seen. In the Iraq War, I remember just witnessing all this brutality. I realized the fundamental importance of journalism. That was the moment where I thought, this is everything to me. I knew that I wouldn't do anything else ever.
RASCOE: The film will air on National Geographic and be available to stream later this week on Disney+ and Hulu. Lynsey Addario joins us now. Welcome to the program.
ADDARIO: Thank you so much for having me.
RASCOE: This movie opens with you witnessing a Russian strike on civilians in Ukraine. You're extremely close to one of the blasts, and then you jump right back into action. How do you keep your composure in a moment like that?
ADDARIO: Well, I guess I would say probably from 25 years of experience. I remember the first time I was under a mortar attack, I could barely compose myself. I had just jumped in a car. We had been warned that there might be incoming fire. I was in Northern Iraq, and a mortar landed literally right behind our car and thrust the car forward. And by the time we sort of pulled back and drove about five miles away, a taxi pulled up and said, we have the body of a journalist in the trunk of our car. And I remember my whole world just sort of falling apart and thinking, I want to go home. I'm not made to cover war.
And fast forward 20 years later, and now I know that when something happens, I have to stop, and my primary role is to photograph. And it sounds ridiculous because I'm a photojournalist and I'm there to cover conflict, but when I'm in shock, when I've just sort of narrowly survived an attack that ended up killing an entire family, then I have to remind myself, literally speak to myself in a voice out loud, to photograph.
RASCOE: This documentary could have been just about your work, but you open up another part of your life - your family life. And I have to imagine that's very vulnerable. Why did you choose that?
ADDARIO: Well, look, I do this for a living. I usually am the one behind the camera, and I go in and ask people to open their entire lives to me - not just sort of their most vulnerable moments, but also their families, their daily life. And it paints a more comprehensive picture. And so I knew that when I accepted to do this documentary with Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi that I would have to open my life and show my vulnerabilities and show the fact that it is not easy being a mother of two kids, being a wife and going to war and coming home and sort of always straddling these two worlds. And so it was important for me to provide as full a picture as possible.
RASCOE: Your kids were fairly young when the documentary was filmed. They'll be a few years older now, and that makes a huge difference. How do they make sense of your work now, and do you feel like they have a better understanding of it?
ADDARIO: In the beginning, I think both of my kids when they were younger thought I was, like, a professional baker, that I made cupcakes or banana bread for a living because when I come home from war, I bake a lot. It's, like, my way of being with the kids, and it's my way of sort of decompressing. And so I think they just had no idea what I did when I actually was away for all that time. Now obviously, Lukas is almost 14.
RASCOE: Yeah.
ADDARIO: He knows what I do. He gets very nervous. And Alfred is kind of the opposite. He's only 6, so he doesn't understand the dangers. He just knows that I'm a photographer now.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ALFRED: I wish, wish have you.
ADDARIO: To have me home?
ALFRED: Never to go away.
ADDARIO: I know. But Mommy has to work.
ALFRED: Do you know you'll never have to go to work ever again?
ADDARIO: Really?
ALFRED: Yeah.
ADDARIO: I have to, my love.
ALFRED: It's your last time.
ADDARIO: I just try to do the best I can. I try to be present as much as I can when I'm home. And in the field, I try to focus on my work. Of course, I beat myself up, and I'm constantly feeling insufficient at both, you know, motherhood and as a journalist. But all I can do is really focus on trying my best and not focusing on the fact that I'm not leading a traditional life.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ADDARIO: Does that make sense?
ALFRED: Have you go to the closest...
ADDARIO: Here.
ALFRED: ...Ever?
ADDARIO: You mean you want me to work in London?
ALFRED: Yeah.
ADDARIO: I can't do that.
ALFRED: Mom, please.
RASCOE: What brings you back over and over again to covering conflict? Because it's clear from the documentary, you couldn't just cover stuff in London locally or what - that's not you.
ADDARIO: No. That's not me. That's not who I am. And, I - you know, my mother, of course - my mother is now 86, and she's like, (impersonating her mother) can't you just be a wedding photographer?
RASCOE: Yes.
(LAUGHTER)
ADDARIO: You know (laughter)?
RASCOE: Well, that's a lot of action.
ADDARIO: I - you know, most people don't understand. But for me, it's really about a responsibility - a responsibility to our world to provide perspective, to show the injustices going on, to document them, to provide a historical record and to show our policymakers, you know, the fruits of their policies and the repercussions of their policies. And I think that for me, I have this incredible privilege to be able to move around the world, to get people to open up their lives with simply my curiosity and a camera. I just can't imagine not doing it.
RASCOE: When people see pictures from these conflicts that go on for years and years, it can be jarring for the public. How is it for you because you're actually there to keep going back to some of the same places and seeing more violence, seeing more destruction? What does that feel like for you as a journalist?
ADDARIO: One of the reasons why I risk my life is because of course the dream is that a photograph will end a war. You know, it'll be so devastating that the leaders will come to the table and negotiate, but obviously, that doesn't happen in real life. I think that when we're in a situation like in Ukraine where I was covering it from before the full-scale invasion - I've made probably a dozen trips - we have photographed so much devastation, and the war goes on. It sort of grinds on. We're looking at Gaza. We're looking at over 67,000 civilians who have been killed in Gaza, and no international media is allowed in.
One of the things that is so devastating for me as a journalist is - my tool to deal with that sort of devastation and frustration is to go to a place and to try to at least give a platform to the people and continue showing those images to the world with the hope that they will make a difference. And when we're in a situation like Gaza where we're not even allowed in, it's so hard for me to sit on the sidelines and not be able to do anything. And so I think it's very difficult. I try to focus my energy and frustration into my work and into going back and just trying to document so that hopefully one day there will be an end to that conflict.
RASCOE: That's Lynsey Addario. She's a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist featured in the new documentary "Love+War." Thank you.
ADDARIO: Thank you so much for having me, Ayesha.
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