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I remember the moment in which we were taken hostage in Libya, and we were asked to lie face down on the ground, and they started putting our arms behind our backs and started tying us up. And we were each begging for our lives because they were deciding whether to execute us, and they had guns to our heads.
Lynsey Addario
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I'm a very open person, very self-deprecating. I accept my flaws.
Lynsey Addario
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I got rejected from journalism school!
Lynsey Addario
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As a woman, I have tried to take advantage of the extra access I have in the Muslim world: with Muslim women, for example. Many people underestimate women in that part of the world because, typically, they don't work.
Lynsey Addario
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With photography, I always think that it's not good enough.
Lynsey Addario
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A lot of women act like it's the easiest decision, and I'm just going to have a baby and put my life on hold and not be worried about it. Well, I was worried.
Lynsey Addario
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Sometimes when I am photographing a major news event, I am suddenly overwhelmed by helplessness.
Lynsey Addario
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In a place like Afghanistan where the society is completely segregated, women have access to women. Men cannot always photograph women and cannot get the access that I get.
Lynsey Addario
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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
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I would never think of myself as a role model.
Lynsey Addario
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Journalists dedicate their lives to covering war - they make many personal sacrifices, and it's not something that's gender-based. In a place like Libya where there's heavy fighting, it doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman.
Lynsey Addario
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I think it's important to have perspective and to look at what you don't necessarily want to see.
Lynsey Addario
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My strength is looking for composition and light, and I think those things come in the quieter times of war or photographing people affected on the margins of war - civilians, refugees; that is where I really excel.
Lynsey Addario
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When I first started out, I really felt like, 'I'm a journalist; I will be respected as a neutral observer.' And I don't feel like that holds true anymore. I don't think people respect journalists the same way they once did.
Lynsey Addario
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I was lucky because I had parents who have enabled me to do whatever I was passionate about and never held my siblings and me back from anything. But I think a lot of people don't have that experience.
Lynsey Addario
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Obviously I am a photographer and I believe in my medium: I do think that powerful photographs can force change. It doesn't take long to look and be engaged in a strong image whereas, with a story, you have to actually sit down and pause and be involved in it.
Lynsey Addario
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I didn't want my gender to determine whether or not I could cover breaking news.
Lynsey Addario
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Look, I would say that anyone who does this work and doesn't have a strain of idealism is an adrenaline junkie or completely narcissistic. There is no other justification. You're risking your life, and if anything happens, it's our families who suffer tremendously.
Lynsey Addario
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In so many countries, Western journalists are viewed simply as dollar signs. We're ransom objects.
Lynsey Addario
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I was kidnapped by Sunni insurgents near Fallujah, in Iraq, ambushed by the Taliban in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan, and injured in a car accident that killed my driver while covering the Taliban occupation of the Swat Valley in Pakistan.
Lynsey Addario
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For me, taking photographs is such a tortured process. I'm always feeling like I'm not getting enough: I'm in the wrong place, the light isn't good, the subject's not comfortable.
Lynsey Addario
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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
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It seems like, yeah, of course - I always think my work is important, or I wouldn't risk my life for it.
Lynsey Addario
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You have to believe 100 percent in what you're doing, that some picture or some thing we do is going to change the world in some tiny, minute way.
Lynsey Addario
