Transcript

Photojournalist Lynsey Addario on balancing work and family — when work is a war zone | Fresh Air

From Fresh Air · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 37 min · 6,226 words · 65 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "Photojournalist Lynsey Addario on balancing work and family — when work is a war zone | Fresh Air", an episode of Fresh Air published December 12, 2025 (37 min, about 6,226 words). It mentions 7 people, works and ideas, including Lindsey Adario, Love and War, Sam Fragoso, Darian Gap, It's What I Do.

What this episode is about

Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Lynsey Addario discusses the challenges of balancing her high-risk career in war zones with motherhood, emphasizing the ongoing gendered perceptions of working mothers in the field. Her experiences, documented in the new film "Love and War," highlight her dedication to covering significant global conflicts while advocating for the importance of sustained public attention on humanitarian crises.

Key takeaways

  • Lindsey Adario proves that a lens can both capture and catalyze change in a world eager to forget.
  • In a male-dominated field, Adario's work challenges the narrative: motherhood and war reporting can coexist spectacularly.
  • Her photos aren’t just images; they’re visceral reminders that behind every statistic are families torn apart by violence.
  • The father discovering his family's death through Adario's lens is a tragic reminder of the real cost of conflict.
  • Adario's experience raises a critical question: how do we confront the emotional toll of wielding a camera in war?

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 5:00: Love and War, Sam Fragoso
  2. – 10:00: Darian Gap
  3. – 15:00: Darian Gap, It's What I Do
  4. – 25:00: Gaddafi army, It's What I Do
  5. – 30:00: Committee to Protect Journalists
  6. – 37:15: Love and War, Sam Fragoso

Notable quotes from "Photojournalist Lynsey Addario on balancing work and family — when work is a war zone | Fresh Air"

  • Around the perceived limits of working mothers is at the heart of a new documentary called Love and War. It paints a comprehensive picture of Adario's life both in the field…
    about Love and War · at
  • Show a different version. There's a moment in the film where we see you in Somalia, Panama, and the Darian Gap where you're working to tell these urgent stories to show us in…
    about Darian Gap · at
  • In your memoir, It's What I Do. You write, When I return home and rationally consider the risks, the choices are difficult, but when I'm doing my work, I'm alive.
    about It's What I Do · at
  • March of 2011, you and three other New York Times journalists are kidnapped and held hostage for 6 days by the Gaddafi army. And in the book, you write about this moment a…
    about Gaddafi army · at
  • Being held accountable for those killings. According to the CPJ, the Committee to Protect Journalists, 2024 was the deadliest year for journalists and this year 121 journalists…
    about Committee to Protect Journalists · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Lindsey Adario — Person · 10 mentions
  • Sam Fragoso — Person · 2 mentions · first at
    Ukraine. But before we say more about her, I want to introduce our guest interviewer today, Sam Fragoso. You may know him as the host of the interview podcast, Talk Easy. I…

Books & papers

Companies & orgs

Places & events

Full transcript with timestamps

This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Our guest today is the Puliter Prizewinning photojournalist Lindseay Adario, who has risked her life and come close to losing it working in war zones, including Ukraine. But before we say more about her, I want to introduce our guest interviewer today, Sam Fragoso. You may know him as the host of the interview podcast, Talk Easy. I think he's a terrific interviewer, and I say that as a listener to the podcast and as one of his recent interviewees. Now that I've introduced Sam, here's Sam to introduce Lindseay Adario.

In 2015, Lindseay Adario published an essay in the New York Times magazine titled, "What can a pregnant photojournalist cover? Everything." Adario, now a mother of two, has since continued her work in the male dominated world of conflict photography. But the gendered question around the perceived limits of working mothers is at the heart of a new documentary called Love and War. It paints a comprehensive picture of Adario's life both in the field and back at home. Since September 11th, 2001, Adario has covered nearly every major conflict and humanitarian crisis of her generation, including the Ukraine war, where she's been on assignment from the New York Times since 2022.

In the process of creating what she calls a historical record, she's been kidnapped twice, thrown out of a car on a highway in Pakistan and been ambushed on two different occasions by the Taliban and Iraqi insurgents. People have a tendency to move on, she says in love and war. It's my job to get people to continue paying attention. Lindsay Adario, welcome back to Fresh Air.

Thank you so much. I want to begin where the film does on March 6th of 2022 in Urpin, Ukraine, where you're on assignment for the New York Times. And I believe it's there that you're photographing Ukrainian refugees, children, peaceful civilians attempting to flee the violence that had begun just days earlier. In the distance, we see a family with backpacks, a blue roller suitcase, and they make it safely across the Urban River and into Kev, where they then enter your frame. Can you tell us what you saw next?

Yeah, so on the morning of March 6th, it was a Sunday morning and we understood that uh hundreds of people were fleeing the area of BHA and Pim, which were the suburbs around Kev. And it seemed very tense that morning. And uh we approached and immediately took cover behind this sort of cement wall. And I was photographing civilians kind of streaming across my viewfinder, getting really angry, actually, kind of upset that I was watching like children uh being dragged by their parents and the elderly on people's backs and that civilians were once again paying the price of war. And so, uh, as I was photographing, a mortar round came in and it came in and it landed a little bit off in the distance, like, I don't know, a few hundred meters. And then a second round came in and my security adviser said, "Do you want to leave?"

And I said, "No, the Russians know this is a civilian evacuation route." You know, Putin said that he was not deliberately targeting civilians, so I think we're okay. Then suddenly another round came in and landed literally about 20 ft from me and I dove down uh behind the cement wall. So immediately I looked at Andre, my Ukrainian colleague Andre Dupchuk and we checked each other out to make sure we weren't bleeding. And then it was very dusty uh because of of course the aftermath of this mortar landing very close to us. And I immediately assumed that it was soldiers who had been hit. I don't know why because obviously there were civilians in that position, but I in my head I sort of like thought it was soldiers.

And I ran across the street and I started trying to process what I was seeing. And I was looking at these four bodies. First, I didn't know if they were alive or or had been killed. And I was looking at their feet and I saw these little moon boots of a child and I thought, how can it be like that's a child? You know, there shouldn't be a child killed. And I am a mother and my son Alfred was about three at that time. And my instinct was to run. But then I said to myself like, "No, you know, you need to take photographs." like I I knew I had just witnessed like the deliberate targeting of civilian evacuation route.

So I started taking photos and very quickly moving my way around the scene and eventually made it back to the hotel and filed the pictures of this family. It was a mother, her two children, and a church volunteer who was ushering them to safety that morning. And then there was a a lot of debate as to, you know, whether it was appropriate to run a picture of four dead civilians. The New York Times doesn't usually publish pictures of dead civilians and nor would they publish faces. And so eventually they decided to run with the picture and I really pushed for it because I was in the attack and I witnessed the runup and I knew it was deliberate. It wasn't just sort of a a random attack. And it turned out that the father and husband of the woman and children killed found out about his family's death from my photograph. And so that

on the front page of the New York Times, well, he saw it first on Twitter uh and then eventually, you know, on on the New York Times, but it was uh for him his first he he first learned about his family's death on Twitter and on social media, and he recognized the luggage and the jackets and and um and we met with him a few days later with Andrew Kramer, the New York Times uh bureau chief at the time. Speaking of the documentary, one of the reasons you agreed to participate in the film is because you had seen several other films about war correspondents and they were always about men and quote, "No one ever really got it right." What did you want to correct in making this movie?

Well, I mean, look, no one ever got it right. Maybe that's not fair to say because obviously a documentary on a man like Jim Knockway, the war photographer, was brilliant and Jim is brilliant. I mean, he's an extraordinary war photographer, but we're very different people. And I think the image that most people have in their heads of war photographers is like Jim, you know, stoic, strong, um, you know, he he puts everything into his work and doesn't really share his personal life. Um, and I think that that is a majority. I think Jim represents a majority of people who do the work that I do. But I guess when I said no one ever gets it right, it's more like we're not all like that, you know, and I rarely see the picture of a woman depicted in that role as a war photographer. And so I really wanted to show a different version. There's a moment in the film where we see you in uh Somalia, Panama, and the Darian Gap

where you're working to tell these urgent stories to show us in vivid photographic detail the cost of conflict while also fielding a typical call from your family back home. I want to play a clip from that moment. In it, your husband Paul speaks first.

It's the length of assignments that's always been the challenge in our relationship. If it's one week, two weeks, it's not really a big deal. But when it gets longer over three weeks is always things tend to unravel at home.

Okay. In my heart, all I want to be doing is shooting. It's frustrating. I'm constantly tortured like I'm not in the right place, but I come back. I'm supposed to be really happy. And I feel like I should be there and I feel like a bad journalist cuz I'm not. My head is always where I'm not.

Hi Lucas. When are you coming back? Oh, like 10 days. I know, my love. It's the compromise, right? She wants to do all of the things and be at home as well, and it's just not possible. Everything has gotten delayed. I may not get home till Saturday.

I suck as a parent. I suck as a journalist. I'm always compromising. I can't do it. I'll switch with someone.

No, I know. No, no, no. This is He's asked for it constantly. This is Alfa's thing. I mean, he's seriously not going to

Why don't you just be a mother? H that's rough hearing that clip now. How did it play to you?

Well, I mean it plays absolutely like our lives, you know. I mean the thing is this is a constant negotiation and a constant give and take uh in our lives and Paul and I have those conversations uh routinely because what you know I try to line up these stories. What happens in most of the places I cover is that they are extremely hard to access. So it's not like you can just fly into the heart of a war and and you know shoot for 10 days and leave. Like often it takes me days if not a week to actually get to a story and then I have to work.

And so, you know, a lot of that is I'll sign up to be the mystery reader at school and I go and read to Alfred's class and then I have to cancel because I get stuck in the Darian Gap or everyone always says, "Do you FaceTime with your kids when you're gone?" And actually, I find it almost harder on them because then they're just reminded of the fact that I'm not there. And so, you know, it's just so there's so much packed into that clip that you played because it's it's stuff I've been grappling with since I became a parent.

And it kills me that my kids don't have just a normal mother who can be present all the time. And that's why I really didn't think I would ever have children because I just didn't think this profession would allow me um the the ability to sort of be able to stop and have kids. And it wasn't until I met Paul and Paul said, you know, I will be the full-time parent and you can continue doing your work. So, it was sort of like our prenup, you know, was like, I don't want money. I want my freedom and I want my time to be able to work. That's all I wanted out of, you know, my my marriage and and our, you know, when we talked about looking forward was like I we we just realized we love each other. We want a family, but I'm never going to be that person who's home all the time.

Did he sign the photojournalist prenup that you presented him with? Yeah. Well, he did. And that he he married me. And I think he knew that when he met me, I was exactly the same. So, you know, people don't change that much. And so, I think he he got that. You say in the film that raising kids is harder than war, which is a great oneline joke, but is any of that bit true for you?

Yeah, it is true for me actually. I I think people are so stunned that I actually said that out loud, but I but I really mean it. You know, having kids is one of of course the greatest gifts in life, but it's also one of the hardest things I've ever done. you know, because the I have these two sons who rely on me. You can't just sort of turn them off when you need some time. You know, you need it's it's a lot of work and it's a lot of emotion. I have to be dedicated when I'm home to to whatever they need and that's what parenting is. But I think for um you know, for any working parent, we have so much stress and so much on our minds that we bring home. And so it's very hard, you know, when I'm in a war zone, that is my focus and that's all I'm doing. It's like I know how toate my I make calculations about the danger. I photograph. I go back to the hotel. I file. I try not to get hit in a missile

strike. Go to the shelter when I have to. It's very kind of, you know, I know the drill. But with kids, it's like I can't control when their emotions arise or when their needs arise. And it's it's a full-time thing. And it's very hard to do to have a full-time job as a parent when I'm juggling another job essentially or another life.

In your memoir, It's What I Do. You write, "When I return home and rationally consider the risks, the choices are difficult, but when I'm doing my work, I'm alive."

Correct. So, so when you're back home, how do you grapple with that? You know, you're right. I mean, you're absolutely right. I think when I'm uh anywhere but behind my the viewfinder of my camera actually taking photographs, I have a million things in my in my mind. I have a million things I want to be doing. I have a million things I am doing. And I'm very kind of scattered and stressed and whatever. And the place where it all comes together and I just focus and I am totally 100% present is when I'm working. And I don't know how to describe that. When I'm home, I'm happy to be home. I'm happy to be with my family, but I have one eye on the television. What is the story I should be covering next? I'm spread very thin.

But it is true that when when I start to actually go out to take photos and I'm in a situation where I'm interviewing someone, capturing their story, making pictures, I feel most like myself, like where I need to be. And that's a hard thing to say out loud because most people will be like, "Well, that makes you a horrible mother and that makes you like a, you know, you should never say that out loud." But that's just me and and you know I that is a reality.

Lindsay, I wanted to talk about how you arrived at doing all this work in the first place which I believe began back in 1996 working at the Buenos ARS Herald where you were paid $10 a picture.

Yes. At that point, did you know what photographer you wanted to be? No, I absolutely did not know what kind of photographer I wanted to be. I had been photographing since I was about 12 or 13. My dad gave me a camera that a client of his had given to him and I started kind of teaching myself how to photograph. I read all these books with Anel Adams photos on the cover of how to photograph and aperture and f-stop and speed and and so I was kind of teaching myself how to photograph. But by the time I got to Argentina, I had graduated from University of Wisconsin at Madison. I had studied international relations and Italian. And I wanted to learn Spanish. And so I went to Argentina and it was in Buenosaris that I started becoming aware of photographs in the newspaper and how one could sort of marry photography and international relations. And it was this revelation to me and it seems crazy but

actually I wasn't really aware that photojournalism as a profession existed. And so I went into the English language newspaper and there were two men in kind of their 40s who would just chain smoke in the photo department and pull pictures off the AP wire. And I went in and I just said like can I have a job? And they looked at me and they were like first of all go learn Spanish and come back. And so I was like okay. and I already spoke Italian, so I learned Spanish very, very quickly. And I went back like, I don't know, a month or two later and I said, "Okay, like I learned Spanish. Can I have a job?" And they were like, "No." And I just basically was relentless. I just kept going in.

And finally they said, "Okay." Well, hold on. Lindsay, hold on. Why do you think you were so relentless? Why did you keep badgering them? Because I think I was in all that time I was like started looking at newspapers and magazines and exhibitions. I went to a Salgado exhibit that kind of blew my mind and I think I realized like I could take photographs and tell stories with photographs and it was something that I I didn't realize before. I to me photography was like fine art or it was you know uh uh Enri Cartier Brassant and it was like you know capture the decisive moment or it was you know but it never was about telling stories and specifically about political issues international relations and so it just seemed like okay this is it this is this is for me. But is the dog in this because you're the the youngest of four growing up in Connecticut? Like where does that come from?

I mean, I wish I knew where the dogness came from. I mean, I I do not give up. And it's like, yeah, it's probably because I'm the youngest of four sisters, but it's a trait in me that has cursed me and it's blessed me because I I just don't give up. Um, but anyway, so I kept going into this photo department and the guys were just so sick of me that they were like, "Look, Madonna is filming a Vita at the Kasa Rosada and if you can sneak on set and get a picture of Madonna, we'll give you a job." So that was my big break. I went to the set. It was like early evening. There were all these New York bouncers. There was a perimeter around the set. And of course, I talked my way on. I was like, "If you let me in, I'm going to be famous one day. I'm going to be a famous photographer." The guys were like, "Okay, you're so pathetic. We're just going to let you inside and good luck."

And so I went onto the press riser and I raised my little camera to my eye and I only had a 50 mm lens. And of course, Madonna was like miles away. And so I must have looked so exasperated because this guy, one of the journalists, one of the photographers on the press riser had like a 600 mm lens. You know, it was on a tripod. It looked like a Hubble telescope essentially. And he looked at me and he goes, "Hey kid, put your camera back on my lens and you could take a photo." And I was so green. I knew so little about photography that I didn't even realize I can put my Nikon camera back on the back of his giant lens. And so he helped me and I did it and I took a photo and it was like of the balcony. It wasn't even like Madonna, you know, it was the balcony.

And I ran. I was so ignorant that I didn't even stay all night to get the picture. And I ran back to the newsroom and I ended up getting the picture on the front page. And it was a horrible picture, but I got a job. And so I stayed like 9 months and that's where I did my first like published works.

Come 2000 in your late 20s, you're working in Pakistan and Afghanistan under Taliban rule. But it wasn't until the attacks of 9/11 that the trajectory of your career changed. Can you take me back to the first time you were bombed in March of 2003 in northern Iraq?

Oh yeah. Um so this is while um US forces were backing Kurdish Peshmerga to fight against Alansar in northern Iraq. And so I was working with a with a group of journalists, international media based in uh northern Iraq. So Airbil and Sulammania. And things were getting very very tense. It was like kind of moving up to when the invasion of Iraq was going to happen. The US forces were with Kurdish Peshmerga fighting Alansar. Fighting was kind of really picking up. And it was near this area of Halabja uh in northern Iraq. And so I was working with a group of journalists and we heard that a lot of civilians started fleeing from the mountains where Elansar had their stronghold. So we went out there and we were all kind of parked along this road. It was like a Tjunction and people were fleeing from the mountains coming toward us and at one point it started getting pretty tense and a lot of the civilians were saying get out of

here. Get out of here. It's not safe. And of course, the one lesson I've learned in all my many years covering war is you always have to listen to the locals. And so I was standing with this other journalist and I suddenly got this like feeling in the pit of my stomach and I ran back to the car and shut the door and a huge amortar um came like very close to us and our entire car was thrust forward and our driver just took off and sped like very very fast and we drove for about 10 minutes to a safer area and we got out and we stopped at a hospital and they were offloading the injured and there were people being treated and it was chaos and and I had never had such a near-death experience and I was kind of in shock. I'm just standing there and all I can think of is I just I I don't know if I can do this.

Like that was really scary. And suddenly a taxi pulled up and this taxi driver said, "Is there a journalist around?" And I said, "Yeah." And he said, "Can anyone help me? I had the body of a journalist in my trunk and I sort of doubled over and I felt like I was going to throw up and I started sobbing and said like I just want to go home. Like I don't want to end up in the back of a trunk one day. Like I don't want to die doing this job, you know? I don't think I have it in me to to be that brave. You know, there's a passage about this moment in your book, It's What I Do, at the end of chapter 5, and it has stayed with me since I first read it. And I thought, if you're open to it, um, would you mind reading it for us? Okay.

How did one transfer the body of a friend out of a country we all snuck into illegally when there were no functioning embassies, no police, no diplomats, and the only open border accessible from northern Iraq was Iran. It seemed so obvious, but I didn't know that war meant death, that journalists might also get killed in the war. I hid behind the hospital, ashamed of my weakness, my tears, and my fear, wondering if I had the strength for this job, and wept inconsolably. The war had begun. I, you know, it's so interesting to read that passage now, 20 plus years later, because of course, war means death. And, and when war, you know, now we're in an era where journalists are routinely targeted and routinely killed. And I've lost friends and colleagues and uh I I've you know we've we've of journalist journalism is equated with death now in a way that it wasn't when I first started out. You know when when I first

started out yeah we put press and journalists and TV on our flat jackets and helmets and and our cars and on the top of our cars in case there was a an air strike to be had. And you know, it's it's ridiculous. Now, of course, I read that passage and I was so naive.

3 weeks into the Libyan uprising in March of 2011, you and three other New York Times journalists are kidnapped and held hostage for 6 days by the Gaddafi army. And in the book, you write about this moment a month later when you're back in New York. Despite all that you had witnessed and endured yourself, it was actually the passing of your colleagues Tim Heatherington and Chris Hondros who were both killed in Libya that kind of opened the floodgates, so to speak. Like, yeah. Was it the loss of them that tore down what you described in the book as your everpresent guard?

Is that is that what did it? Well, it was a combination of things. But I think what happens in these situations is like, you know, we survived our driver Muhammad uh did not we the the New York Times sent a team back to Libya to see if he they could help find him in one of the prisons if he was still alive. And essentially he was never found alive. And and so we assume he was executed or killed in crossfire and in that moment. And um so there's like a survivor's guilt that that that that happens or that I felt. And so when Tim and Chris uh were killed, basically I had been emailing with Tim and Chris. I spent the New Year's Eve with them that year. Um with both of them and both, you know, a bunch of other photographers. And Tim and I were emailing in the leadup to his his arrival in Libya. He was asking me all sorts of questions about what to bring and etc. And then when we survived that

horrific experience in Libya where we should have been killed, I mean we could have been killed I don't know how many different on how many different occasions. um to be back in New York and to be sitting in a conference room uh with surrounded by a bunch of editors and to see on my Blackberry at the time uh to look over and see that they had been killed in Libya as a like a the headline of an email. I couldn't I I couldn't hold myself together. Everything sort of came crashing down on me. And I think I think it was because you know in those moments I asked myself those questions of like why why why did we survive and they didn't you know why who decides these things in life and and there are no answers of course but it just felt like the proximity my own proximity to death became so clear in that moment maybe I had just tucked it aside and and just thought okay you know like I tell myself

every time and I'm in a near-death experience, maybe it wasn't as bad as I thought it was.

I'm curious about the risks journalists face at this moment because since you began 25 years ago, there's been a rise in kidnapping. There's a rise in targeted killing of journalists with few being held accountable for those killings. According to the CPJ, uh, the Committee to Protect Journalists, 2024 was the deadliest year for journalists and this year 121 journalists and media workers have already been killed and those are just the ones

we know about. Exactly. Um, do you think the lack of culpability is the result of people believing less and less in the value of our largest media institutions? I don't I I don't know. I think they play off one another. I think a few things are happening. I think yes, journalists are routinely killed and targeted with impunity. I think that uh no one very few people are ever held accountable for killing journalists. Although you know there have been uh obviously people like the committee to protect journalists, there are organizations that very you know they take uh incredible extraordinary measures to document every single death of a journalist and and make people aware of the fact that this is a profession that is increasingly dangerous. And I think um but I also think that the rhetoric of like fake news and you know uh the rhetoric against the truth and journalism itself also doesn't help the situation you know

so I think it's it's it comes from both sides. I think that people take for granted the fact that they have news at their disposal that there is a free press that we are allowed to express ourselves and I think that's problematic right now because you know we we live in a world where democracy and journalism and free press is always under attack and we see it in certain countries where people cannot speak about uh cannot speak honestly and openly without getting targeted. So, you know, when you see journalists get targeted, obvious the obvious casualty of that is truth.

We've spoken extensively about the risks involved with the job. Mhm. But I'm thinking about the consequences of continuing to do this work as I know

you will because you say in the film, I've set it up so if something does happen to me, they have Paul.

Mhm. And that really I have to say it um Yeah. It kind of broke my heart because the way you've set it up in the film, it plays as if you've created conditions almost like a rehearsal for him and the kids of what life could be like should you not be able to make it back.

Well, I mean, how could I not? I mean, look at what I do for a living. I mean, I'm constantly photographing people who are killed in war or people whose lives have been torn apart by war. And so, part of being a war correspondent is that we're always making contingency plans and that is relevant to our own lives, you know, and I think I go into these assignments knowing how dangerous they are. Um, obviously some are less dangerous than others, but just driving a car in war zones is dangerous. It's one of the most dangerous things we do. And in fact, ironically, the only time I've been injured to date was in a car accident, not on the front line. And so I I think yes, that that line, you know, when I say that, I mean it. And I'm not it is it's painful for me to say and it's painful I'm sure you know I think when I was watching the movie with Lucas um it was that line that was so hard for

me to hear myself say next to him because it's true and I and I you know obviously I don't want to get killed. I don't want to die. I don't want to die in war or anywhere else because I I want to be here for my children and for my family. But life is full of surprises and anything can happen not only in war but anywhere. And I think we have to always you know have contingency plans in life and and think of our children what happens if and and that's important.

Have you seen the documentary um salt of the earth? No, the Salgato. Yeah. No, not yet. I have it on my

Okay. Yeah. There there's a part I want to just quote for you. Like, well, around the same time that you walked into that exhibit that you mentioned earlier in the mid '90s,

um, Sebastio So said, after years of photographing famine, war, and genocide in Africa and Europe. Quote, I did not believe in anything. I did not believe in the salvation of the human race. Our history is a history of war. It is an endless story. We should see these images to see how terrible our species is.

Now, he passed away earlier this year and I know he's been a major influence on your work and your career

and the photos you're trying to produce work that affects policy that captures the repercussions of those policies, the fallout. But when you hear that, like, but by the time he he was at the tail end of his career, he was weighed down to the point where he didn't see the point of what he was doing. He did not have any hope left.

How does that quote sit with you in 2025? You know, I I still have hope. I I really do. I still think images can move people, uh can educate people, can enlighten people, can uh flip misconceptions, can uh bridge people. you know, I I still believe in photojournalism and and I still even though I've seen so many horrific things and I've seen evil and I've seen, you know, seen things that I just never thought a human being would be capable of. Um, and I've heard testimonies and, you know, I still see extraordinary beauty and generosity and resilience and love and hope. And I think so long as the people I'm photographing have that spirit, I will have that spirit. And so I'm not at that point. I I hope I don't get to that point. No one ever knows. I mean, I I can't predict how I'll feel uh in in a year, in 5 years, and 10 years.

I have no idea. But I still have hope and belief in photojournalism. At the moment, you're with your family back home in in London, right? Yes.

Do you know where you're headed next? I um I'm looking at Sudan and then I'm also looking at some stories in the United States.

And have you had that conversation with your family yet about the next assignment?

No. Um, I have not because I've been uh on the sort of I've been out promoting the documentary and doing interviews for a few months and I think Alfred, my younger my six-year-old, he's gotten used to having me around and so has Lucas. And I think it's harder when I've been kind of in and out and home than when I'm just gone for a long time at once. So, I haven't had that conversation yet, primarily because I just came home from a 3-week trip and I'm just hesitant to say I'm going to leave again and I'm going to Sudan. Um, so I'm waiting for the right time. It never feels like the right time, but they're hard conversations when I have to say I'm leaving.

How do you do it? [sighs] Oh, I wait for what feels like the right moment and I just try and be strong and say I'll be back really soon and it's a quick trip and you know everything will be fine and you're with daddy and you know Yeah.

When you tell your mother, what do you think she'll say and how do you think she'll say it?

My mother Mhm. She'll say, "When are you going to stop? Why do you have to go? She's gonna say, "Do you really have to go? Can't you just stop already?" And then she'll giggle. And then she'll say, you know, "I understand." She's She says it like, you know. Yeah.

Lindsay Adario, thank you for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. That was photojournalist Lindseay Adario speaking with our guest interviewer Sam Fragoso. Adario is the subject of a new documentary called Love and War. It's streaming on Disney Plus. Sam is the creator and host of the weekly interview podcast, Talk Easy. New episodes drop on Sundays. This is fresh air.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Photojournalist Lynsey Addario on balancing work and family — when work is a war zone | Fresh Air"?

Terry Gross (Host), Lynsey Addario (Guest), Sam Fragoso (Guest).

What is "Photojournalist Lynsey Addario on balancing work and family — when work is a war zone | Fresh Air" about?

Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Lynsey Addario discusses the challenges of balancing her high-risk career in war zones with motherhood, emphasizing the ongoing gendered perceptions of working mothers in the field. Her experiences, documented in the new film "Love and War," highlight her dedication to covering significant global conflicts while advocating for the importance of sustained…

What is mentioned in this Fresh Air episode?

7 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Lindsey Adario, Love and War, Sam Fragoso, Darian Gap, It's What I Do, Committee to Protect Journalists. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Photojournalist Lynsey Addario on balancing work and family — when work is a war zone | Fresh Air"?

The episode runs 37 min; the transcript is about 6,226 words in 65 timestamped sections.

More from Fresh Air

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 24, 2026.