The Current - Photojournalist Lynsey Addario and the cost of covering war

Episode Date: September 9, 2025

A US soldier Lynsey Addario covered in Afghanistan called her "hard as woodpecker lips". Over the last 25 years, Addario has covered every major conflict and won some of the most prestigious awards in journalism. She's also lost friends and colleagues and survived two kidnappings. Matt Galloway talks to the award-winning photojournalist about what it really takes to do her work, why the risks are worth it to her, and how she's managed to navigate marriage and motherhood at the same time. Lynsey Addario is sharing her story in a new documentary called 'Love + War' that's screening as part of the Toronto International Film Festival.

Hugh is a rock climber, a white supremacist, a Jewish neo-Nazi, a spam king, a crypto-billionaire, and then someone killed him. It is truly a mystery. It is truly a case of who done it. Dirtbag Climber, the story of the murder and the many lives of Jesse James. Available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. It was just days after Russia invaded Ukraine.

In a residential neighborhood west of Kiev, you could hear the boom of artillery, civilians were running for their lives, and then a mortar struck. A warning, what you're about to hear includes some strong language. Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit. Oh, come on. Shit. Am I bleeding?

Am I bleeding? No, no. All right. Stay there. All right. Come on, medic! Yeah, you do it. It's a person.

It's the voice of the war photographer, Lindsay Adario, and that's the sound of her camera clicking away in the background there. She was about 10 meters away from that explosion. The images she captured that day made the cover of the New York Times, and they shocked the world. Lindsay Adario is now the subject of a new documentary about her life and career. Love and War just had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. And Lindsay Adario is with me in our Toronto studio. Good morning.

Good morning. Thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. Can you describe, I mean, that photo, as I said, went all around the world. Describe that moment. There were four people killed, including two children. You are meters away from this. What do you remember most about that?

Oh, I remember looking at the photos of that scene from the day before of people fleeing Earpene and Bucha. We went very early in the morning, but it was pretty clear that that morning was more tense. Like, everything was charged. And shortly after arriving, the first incoming round came, but it landed a bit off in the distance. And my security advisor said, do you want to leave? And I said, no, they know, you know, all the soldiers, the Russians know this is a humanitarian evacuation route. And they're not going to kill civilians because obviously at that point, Putin was saying very publicly, we are not targeting civilians. And I very naively believe that.

And so we had some cover behind the cement wall. And then the next round that came in, we sort of dove behind the cement wall. and I remember popping up and I'm photographing women and children and fathers with children on their backs and elderly on their backs and cursing into my camera like how how is this possible and then around came in and literally landed between where we were positioned and the evacuation route and at first I didn't know if I had been injured because my entire neck had been sprayed with gravel and you hear me in the clip saying, am I bleeding, am I bleeding? And Andre Dupchuk, who is a Ukrainian journalist, he looked at me over and I checked him over for blood, and then we kept shooting. But we still didn't realize that there had been people killed. I weirdly in my head thought, if someone was injured, it's going to be a soldier or one of

the territorial defense guys. And so our medic ran across the street with a bunch of Ukrainian soldiers and told us to stay put. And when he finally beckoned us across the street, I remember coming upon the scene sort of feet first and seeing these little silver moon boots. And my heart just sort of sank because I at the time had a three-year-old. And I thought, that's a child. And then I kind of was surveying the scene. And there's still incoming rounds. I mean, it's still extremely dangerous.

and my instinct was to flee, but I told myself, like, no, I've just witnessed the intentional targeting of a family, and I need to stay and photograph this. You saw it, as you said, you sound really angry in that clip, and one of the things you say elsewhere in the film is, what will I risk my life for, for civilians? Yeah. I mean, look, there are some incredible war correspondents working today and have been throughout time who document frontline combat almost exclusively. But I don't feel like that's where I excel as a photographer or as someone who covers war.

For me, it's about the civilian toll. It's about women, children, the innocent bystanders. Can you talk a bit more about that and what you see as your job? You've said that people have a tendency to move on and it's my job to get people to continue paying attention. Yeah. Look, the reality is we all have stuff going on in our own lives. I've said it's very hard to care about people in other countries, especially very far away. And it's also depressing. It's pretty overwhelming. And I think for me, when I go to a place like Ukraine repeatedly or right now I've been working in Sudan most recently for the Atlantic, it's important for me to try to figure out how I can get the reader back in the States or wherever they are to be able to relate to the people in my photograph.

So what are you looking for? When you're making a photograph, what are you looking for? I'm looking for emotion. I'm looking for a connection. I'm looking for, you know, mothers can often relate to mothers. Fathers can relate to a father with an injured child. And so I'm always trying to connect us, no matter how far I am from where my readers are. This is a film that is about the things that you've seen, but it's also how you end up in this position. You come from this middle class family, your parents are hairdressers. You end up with a camera, and you end up doing this work, but there are a bunch of things that you have to get through to get to where you are.

You tell a story about meeting with somebody at the New York Times, the foreign picture editor at the New York Times, who's sitting there, and the way that you describe it, with his leg spread, sipping his whiskey. I mean, that was actually, like, deep into our working relationship. You know, I started working with him several years prior, and what I realized was that once I became a mother, this editor decided to sort of stop sending me to war. And either it was because my availability wasn't as flexible. You know, the thing about war in covering combat or covering breaking news is that you have to be available at the drop of a hat. And any parent knows you need to like line up child care and do all these things. And so I was less available. I was a mother.

And there was some sort of, to me, in that moment, we were actually at a house, like having a dinner. And there was, I said, you know, I want to go to Mosul. I want to be covering Mosul. And he just looked at me. And at first he said, I'm not sending you to war. You're a mother now. And then I said, okay, if you're not going to send me, send another woman. Like, we need women covering war. And he said, there are no women good enough to be working for the New York Times. And to me that was a really definitive moment because I thought, okay, if you have an issue with me as a woman and a mother, there are other women who don't have children who are extraordinary photographers. And they are working very regularly. But I think that there is, there is something ingrained in our heads as a society. Like, people are protective of women. And, you know, maybe editors don't want to send women and don't want to send mothers to the front line because they feel protective and they feel responsible if something happens to a mother. It's more devastating in someone's head than if something happens to a father. And I find that problematic. If we don't have women like yourself,

who are out there documenting what's going on in the world. This is part of the thrust of your work. What don't we see? And what are you able and what are you focusing on to show the rest of the world that perhaps great war photographers who are men maybe don't see? Well, I don't know if it's a matter of they don't see. I think we all choose our focus and we all have interests as photographers and as journalists. But these are the kind of pictures that we don't see if it's just men who are out there in some ways.

I mean, maybe men are – it's hard for. for me to say, because I think there are some men who are doing incredibly sensitive, intimate work. It's not a lot of them, because war is riveting in so many other ways photographically. You know, there's the flash, there's the drama, there's, you know, there's emotion and it's tense, and I think men are drawn to front line. You know, they're drawn to the combat. But for me, personally, when I look at the war in Ukraine, for example, the first year in the war in Ukraine. I was covering the front line a lot. And I was often working in Dumbos and all over Ukraine and really with the troops and whatever. But at some point, I thought, what am I

contributing to the narrative of this story? And so for me, it's all about how can I move this story forward? And so I don't know if it's a gender thing as much as we have our interests as human beings. And maybe I at this stage in my life, I'm 51, I'm more interested in showing the human toll, the toll on mothers, the toll on women and children. And so maybe it's just me personally. I can't, I can't say definitively it's gender. This work is incredibly difficult. And we can talk about the emotional toll of it. But physically, it's just wildly demanding. You're going to shake your head as I say that. Describe what it takes to do what you do. I want to have somebody else describe it. But from your perspective, physically, what does it take to do what you do?

I mean, I think because I'm one of very few women who work on the front line, I'm always self-conscious about whether I'm strong enough to keep up with the men I'm with. And so that was particularly true when I was embedding a lot with the American Marines, for example, in Iraq or Afghanistan. And we would go on six, seven-hour-a-day patrols through very rigorous terrain. So it takes not only being fit like cardio, but muscular. You know, you have to be strong. You have to be agile. We have to wear flack jackets. So bulletproof vests, helmets carry all of our gear.

And you can't turn to a Marine and be like, hey, would you mind helping me with my bag? I mean, you have to be very self-sufficient. And I think for me, it's something when I'm not in the field, I'm basically at home training every day. One of the soldiers that you covered in Afghanistan talked to you and to your colleague, Elizabeth Rubin from the New York Times, about what that takes. Have a listen to this. Instead of carrying weapons, Lindsay would have, like, cameras and lenses strapped to her all over the place.

Almost like clockwork on their way back, they would get shot at. If they weren't physically fit enough, they would put us in danger. But those two women are, they're hard as woodpecker lips. Hard as woodpecker lips? That was, like, literally one of my...

favorite quotes in the movie. I mean, Dan Kearney, that was at the time he was Captain Kearney, and he was incredible. I mean, the fact is it takes a huge amount of trust for these soldiers to allow journalists into their world there because it's very, not only are they getting shot at every day, but they have to make sure that we're safe and that we can keep up and that we don't do something really stupid to reveal their position. I mean, it takes a lot of trust. But they also say, and it's interesting, that they see what you do as a calling. Are you surprised by that? That, I mean, you're right there with them. And you could imagine, and we, you know, have seen instances where the media is kept out of those circumstances.

You're right there with them. And they respect what you're doing. Yeah. I mean, we were very lucky in that case because Captain Kearney trusted us. Colonel Oslon, who commanded the entire region at the time, he also trusted us and had this philosophy of transparency. Like we need journalists here to show the world that this war is nuanced, that sometimes the Taliban is using human shields, putting women and children on their roofs, and that's why we're hitting houses. So I think we were lucky because not only did they trust us, but they allowed us in. And that was like a huge leap of faith because many people in the military don't trust the media. And I think even more so these days, there is increasing sort of animosity. toward the media and distrust in the media.

And I think it's our job as journalists to try to break that down and to create more trust. Because the more trust you have, the more transparency you have and the more we have a real picture of the world. If you want to hear daily news that doesn't hurt your soul

and might even be good for your soul, check out as it happens. I'm Chris Howdy. And I'm Neil Kokesal. Every day we reach people at the center of the most extraordinary stories like the doctor who restored a patient's eyesight

with a tooth. Or a musician in an orchestra that plays instruments made out of vegetables. Take the scenic route through the day's news with as it happens and you can find us

wherever you get your podcasts. How do you process what you have seen when you're out there working? In the film, it's interesting because there's this idea that if you are covering the story you're supposed to be emotionally distant

from it and remove from it and you're not at all. No, I mean, you cry a lot. A lot. And the things that you see that would make anybody cry. It's embarrassing. It's not embarrassing.

It's a human reaction. It's a little embarrassing for me because most of my colleagues are like these really hardened men who are just like almost never express emotion. You know, so when I watch the documentary, I'm like, oh, God, everyone's going to think of such a crybaby. And that like I'm not in hardcore combat, you know, I mean, most of the combat you see in the dock is for someone like me, it's not like Libya was where it was literally like Armageddon, you know, where we're standing in the middle of desert and stuff's flying past. us. But I think, you know, I don't know. I guess I put myself, I have so much empathy for the people I photograph. And so I'm constantly thinking about what it would be like to be in their position. And that makes me very emotional. And especially as I get older. So like there's a scene where I'm photographing two sisters hugging. And I remember just thinking of my sisters. I'm like,

what if what if we got separated and that was it like that's all i needed for me to break down the film and you're saying this when you're coming in there's a lot of you that is in this movie in terms of your own personal life as well and the film spends some time with your family with your husband paul and with your sons lucas and alfred this is from an evening when you had just returned from ukraine have a listen oh my god You fall down, not a... Fuck up! Yeah.

Maybe, Lindsay, you can read a good night story first. Get it. Get it. You're back. Get it. Yeah. You only have to five weeks. I don't really.

I'm not really up for reading a bad story. No, no, no. You just do a short one and then... Oh, Paul. Alfred. What? Alfred. Do you want Mommy to read you a good night story?

Yeah. What is it like to come home? Oh, that's a funny clip. It's hard. It's hard, especially when I've been gone for seven weeks or six weeks and I've had, I've been through some really traumatic events. Like that, coming back from that trip was after I had just photographed the family that was killed in front of me on the bridge. And I, and I think for me, I'm trying to adjust and insert myself back into the family as fast as possible. Because I feel. like I need to make up for lost time. And so it's hard because their lives haven't stopped. And of course, in a child's life, seven weeks is a huge amount of time. And so I don't even know the bedtime routine anymore. You know, I have to ask my husband, so what time does he go to bed? What is he reading? What's the bath routine? And it sounds crazy, but it's hard to get back on track. There's a scene in the film in which you're just coming back from Ukraine. You end up

in Poland and then you're heading back to London. And it looks like it's in one day that you leave Ukraine in the morning. You're trying to get back for your son's music concert in the evening. And you get into the car and you start to cry. What's going on there? Yeah, that was one day. So I got to Ukraine February 14th and before the full scale invasion. And then the Russians entered and I was there for the first six weeks of the war. And so a lot happened. That was so intense. And as you asked before, am I processing in the moment? No, I'm not because I'm on like autopilot every day I'm getting up and I'm photographing people dying, a man crying over his mother, people fleeing for their lives in a frenzy, women giving birth in a basement. I mean, it's just nonstop every day for six weeks. And then I cross out of Poland. And I remember I sat in the back of this. taxi and I sent a message to Paul and I said, baby, I made it out and I lost it. I just, I didn't realize like how much I had been carrying. It's just got to be really hard to come back to

normal life, if that makes sense. Do you know what I mean? The routines being in a taxi. The taxi driver in London says, where were you? I was in Ukraine. He just thought maybe you were on holiday or something like that. It turns out you were in Ukraine. I mean, I actually would love to do a short film on all of my conversations with London taxi drivers when I come back from assignment because some of my favorite reactions in the world are when I sit in a London taxi leaving Heathrow and they're like, so did you have a nice vacation? I'm like, I'm coming from Somalia or like I'm coming. And no one can believe it. I think because they see this like tiny five foot tall woman, you know, coming into their cab and they just, for whatever reason, no one can

never believe I'm coming out of war. And so the reactions are always really funny. But the other part of it is the expectation, this is what you say in the film. The expectation is you're going to be back and you'll be plugged right into that routine doing the best. And you say that kids are harder than war at some point in time. You admit that you're thinking of where you aren't when you're at home. Oh, I mean, that has been the theme that has sort of plagued my entire life. It's like I always feel like I need to be in like 10 places at once. If I'm not, you know, if I'm in Sudan, I feel like I need to be in Gaza. If I, we can't get into Gaza because no journalists are allowed into Gaza. So then I feel like I need to

be in Ukraine or in Syria or, and wherever I am, I feel like I'm not doing enough. I'm not telling the world about the devastation that's happening around the world because I just, I just can't be in all these places at once, obviously. And then I feel bad that I'm not being a good mother, and when I'm home, I feel like I need to go right back to work. What do you do with that, then? I'm tortured. I mean, it's really hard. I mean, I don't know.

I just try to be present wherever I am. I think my children are still young. I have a six-year-old. Alfred is now six, and Lucas is now 13. Lucas is just coming to terms with what I do. I think he's just starting to understand what I do. He's pretty quiet a lot in this. He's quiet.

He's quiet. You know that there's a lot going on, right? That's what's, it's harder for me to see Lucas because he doesn't talk about what he's processing. And I see it. I sort of feel his brain churning. And, yeah, we will sit down and watch the documentary with him because I think, you know, kids, they will see what they want to see. So I think we're going to sit and watch it with him. Do they understand?

And how do you understand the danger that you face in this? I mean, there's one of the scenes where maybe it's Alfred has that he's got one of the plates from your bulletproof vest that he's playing with. Most parents don't have the plates of bulletproof vest saying, you know, but he's trying to figure out what it is. And you sort of explain what it is because what you do is dangerous. Yeah. I mean, I try to keep all my sort of my military gear like up in the attic, you know, but sometimes I'm packing and I have to figure out which vest am I going to bring, what helmet am I going to bring, what, you know, and they come up. And I don't want to lie to them because I think it's really important to be transparent. But I also am sort of selective with how much information I give them.

So, you know, I think Lucas now, he really asks me, like, do you have to go to Ukraine? Will it be dangerous where you're going? And I often am like, no, I'll be fine because I feel like I have the tools to try to be as safe as I can possibly be. But of course, nothing, like nowhere is a guarantee will be safe. Anything can happen anywhere. But I definitely, I feel like I take a lot less risk now than I used to take. Dexter Filkins, who was a colleague of yours at the New York Times, he's now at the New Yorker, says she's really good. The proof is her pictures and that she's still alive.

There are stories in this film about how close you were to not making it out of situations. When people do that, when people have been kidnapped, not once but twice, most people would say that's enough. Thank you very much. And you don't. You go back. Yeah. I mean, I've always struggled with the fact that I wouldn't be me and I wouldn't be happy if I wasn't doing this work because I feel it's almost like a religion for me. I mean, it is a calling. It is something that I believe so wholeheartedly in doing. And I love people. I love telling their stories. I find it a, absolute privilege. And I think we need perspective as human beings. You know, we're in a world now with AI and social media and all of these things that sort of try and connect us through computers or try to give us information. But actually, there is no substitute to human relations. And there is

no substitute for being a photographer or a journalist who goes and sits and has a cup of tea with someone on the other side of the world and just listens to them. You know, that is invaluable in a world where we need to understand each other better. We need to understand our differences. The other part of that is that, and you talk about this in the film, you can make a difference. You say in the film that I've seen a lot of women die and maybe I can help people. How have you seen your work change how people, not just how they see the world, but also the outcomes that people can have?

I mean, so many, so much of the time I don't know the impacts my pictures have. Unless I get an email, I get emails from people around the world. consistently, which is so incredible saying, like, I saw this story. I read the story and you taught me X, or now I understand X. But I think in the case in the documentary, we were talking about Mama Cise, who was a woman I photographed dying in Sierra Leone. She hemorrhaged after giving birth to twins. And I was there, and I obviously, I'm a photographer. I'm not a doctor. I don't have the tools to sort of intervene and we're not allowed to intervene. But I ran to get the doctor. And by the time the doctor came, the one doctor in the whole province, she bled to

death. And so that story was published in eight pages in Time magazine. And I had no idea the impact of that story because I then move on and go to X amount of countries. And a few, I think like, I don't know how many months later or like a year or so later, I got an email from Dr. Naveen Rao, who was at Merck, the pharmaceutical company. And he said, I want to tell you the story about Mama Cese and the impact you had. And he told me that that story, they had their annual board meeting and they were talking about corporate responsibility. And he put a copy of the magazine in front of all of the people at the meeting. And at the end of the meeting, they unanimously decided to start Merck for mothers. And they put aside $500 million.

to fight maternal death and sort of that moment for me was like an aha moment because I thought just the attention on maternal mortality. I mean, maternal mortality is one of the very few things in our lives that we can actually change the statistics dramatically with information and with a little bit of investment. That's why I do this work. Can I ask you just the last point on this and our last question is what is our responsibility then? The world is a mess right now. The news is terrible, and people don't want to pay attention. We know that news avoidance is through the roof. People are turning things off.

They'll look at anything else other than paying attention to the grim world that is unfolding around them. What is our responsibility to pay attention, do you think? It's such a hard question. I mean, I think it is a lot for anyone to process right now. I mean, the images we're seeing out of Ukraine, out of Gaza, you know, starving children, everything we're looking at is hard to process. process as human beings. And I think our responsibility is to pay attention a little bit as much as you possibly can. And to try to make sure you're getting your news source from people who are doing honest, good journalism. I think that's very important to be respectful of one another,

to have conversations that are not easy, but may sort of bridge a gap. I think it's also really important to realize we are here to understand each other and to communicate and to treat each other with kindness and respect. I mean, if nothing else, try and do that. This is a really powerful film. And, I mean, there are really funny moments in here as well of you singing Lizzo and Cheryl Crow as you're driving down to try and lighten the mood and take some of the edge off. You're amazing. And the work that you have done is remarkable.

And we need to pay attention. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Lindsay Adario has a Pulitzer Prize winning a war photographer. Her new documentary about her work is screening at the Toronto International Film Festival and coming soon to now. National Geographic. That film is called Love and War. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca slash podcasts.