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It's What I Do

A Photographer's Life of Love and War

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

MacArthur Genius Grant winner Lynsey Addario's relentlesspursuit of complex truths drive this heart-pounding and inspirational memoir ofa photographer's life.

Lynsey Addario was just finding her way as a youngphotographer when the events of September 11, 2001, changed the world. One ofthe few photojournalists with experience in Afghanistan, she gets the call toreturn and cover the American invasion. She makes a decision she would oftenfind 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 forherself.

Addario finds in photography a way to travel with a purpose,and It's What I Do is the story ofthat singular calling—how it shapes and drives her life and how it changes thelives of others. She captures virtually every major theater of war of thetwenty-first century and from it creates a historical document of truth on theinternational conflicts that have made, and remade, our world. She photographsthe Afghan people before and after Taliban reign, the civilian casualties andmisunderstood insurgents of the Iraq War, as well as the burned villages andthe countless dead in Darfur. She exposes a culture of violence against womenin the Congo and tells the riveting inside story of her headline-makingkidnapping by pro-Qaddafi forces in the Libyan civil war.

As a woman photojournalist determined to be taken asseriously as her male peers, Addario fights her way into a boys' club of aprofession. Rather than choose between her personal life and profession,Addario learns to strike a necessary balance. In the man who will become herhusband, she finds at last a real love to complement her work, not take awayfrom it, and as a new mother, she gains an even more intensely personalunderstanding of the fragility of life.

Watching uprisings unfold and people fight to the death fortheir freedom, Addario understands she is documenting not only news but alsothe fate of society.It's What I Do is more than just asnapshot of life on the front lines—it is witness to the human cost of war.

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    • AudioFile Magazine
      Author Lynsey Addario uses her camera to capture images of beauty and light as well as despair, horror, and every other human emotion under the sun. Narrator Tavia Gilbert does the same with her voice, giving an authentic and thoughtful performance of this audiobook. As Addario recounts her experience of being held hostage, along with three reporters, by troops loyal to President Gaddafi in Libya, Gilbert brings the appropriate heart-pumping fear to the listener. It's terrifying. It's also a profoundly different experience for Addario--the men are beaten, but she is stroked and groped while being threatened with death. Addario's story is fascinating as she tells of her unusual upbringing, early struggle to get assignments, raw emotion at being embedded in a dangerous culture, and abundant love for her husband and small child. Gilbert delivers it all in a thoroughly satisfying listening experience. A.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      November 17, 2014
      Addario, a photojournalist, documentary photographer, MacArthur Genius Grant recipient, and part of a Pulitzer Prize–winning team for work on a magazine story about the Taliban, presents a highly readable and thoroughly engaging memoir of her experiences around world, documenting and filing photographs in hostile areas for some of the U.S.’s most well-known publications including the New York Times, National Geographic, Time magazine. She touches on aspects of her childhood and upbringing in Connecticut, but focuses mainly on her professional career and development as a photojournalist in the post-9/11 world. She describes her experiences in Afghanistan, India, Iraq, Pakistan, Sudan, and elsewhere—including being kidnapped
      three weeks into the Libyan uprising of 2011. Addario astutely addresses the difficulties of being a woman in a “brutally competitive,” overwhelmingly male profession. She also articulates the passion that compels her and others to continue this difficult and dangerous work, while shedding light on the logistics, risks, and other considerations involved in documenting world events for newspapers and magazines. Addario’s memoir brilliantly succeeds not only as a personal and professional narrative but also as an illuminating homage to photojournalism’s role in documenting suffering and injustice, and its potential to influence public opinion and official policy. Photos.

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  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

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  • English

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