Citation for Lynsey Addario
Lynsey Addario. Photojournalist. Chronicler. Truth Teller.
“I choose to live in peace and witness war,” you wrote in your memoir It’s What I Do. You continued… “To experience the worst in people … but to also remember the beauty.”
From the earliest days of your career, you have delivered an unflinching look at the conflicts, gender injustices, and humanitarian crises of our time. Yet you have always, in equal measure, shown the beautiful qualities that find a way to endure among them: Resilience. Joy. Love. These qualities, you remind us, are always alive — even in the most trying circumstances.
Without any formal training, you made a name for yourself in Argentina — then Cuba, India, Nepal, and then all over the world. In the wake of September 11, you embarked on a mission few would dream of: Secretly photographing and documenting the lives of women and girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan under Taliban rule. Your work took us into their homes, their streets, their schools hidden in basements. You captured daily life in an oppressive regime as few could — yet also showed the hopes, dreams, and ambitions these women strove toward.
Your work has won countless accolades: A Pulitzer Prize. A Macarthur Fellowship. An Emmy nomination, and induction into the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum. Your photographs have graced the front pages of our nation’s most prestigious outlets and publications — The New York Times. Newsweek. Time. National Geographic.
But just as importantly, you have changed the way we see the world. You have demonstrated that photojournalism, at its heart, is about understanding the commonality we share as human beings, even with those halfway across the globe.
And your work has never been more important, especially today. Today, basic facts are questioned. Lies have become mainstream. Authoritarians are overruling freedom of press, and that quest for the truth—something you’ve done your entire career– is slipping away in plain sight. That’s why the power behind your work — that ability you have to get people to open their eyes and see what some want to bury — is one of the most important forces keeping democracies alive.
When war began to rage in Ukraine, there was no doubt where you would be: Chronicling the conflict, on the ground, as only you could. You captured a Russian mortar attack on evacuating civilians — a photograph that became a watershed moment, a photograph that provided irrefutable evidence of Russia’s tactics, and forced people…. all over the world… to reckon with the conflict’s toll.
Lynsey Addario — for being a fearless truth teller; for shining a light on injustices others try to hide; for helping us see the pain, the joy, and the humanity in those all over the world — it is our honor to present you with this 2023 Barnard Medal of Distinction. Congratulations.