The Art of Doing Artist’s Interpretation project is a collaboration between us and imaginative artists we’ve chosen to depict the superachievers we interviewed for our book using excerpts from the book.
When we asked illustrator and controversial cartoonist Danny Hellman to create a work of art about one of the participants in our book he chose war photographer Lynsey Addario. Hellman depicts Addario, a 5’1″ Connecticut native, self-taught photographer, as just a lens’ length away from Mars, the God of War himself, whose path of destruction Addario has unflinchingly followed for the last two decades.
Addario, who we interviewed for a chapter on “How to Shoot a Great War Shot Without Getting Shot,” has been a witness to devastation, death and destruction in Haiti, Iraq, Dafur, Afghanistan and Libya. Her photography has appeared in the New York Times, National Geographic, Time Magazine and other major publications and she has won a Pulitzer prize and a MacArthur genius grant for her work.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, nearly 700 media workers have been killed since 2000, not taking into account those who were killed in which the motive has yet to be confirmed. Addario admits that her work takes a toll on her personal life and psyche. In fact, Addario herself has been kidnapped and threatened with death in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. But despite that her mission remains clear to her. Addario is not out to advance a partisan political position but to capture the reality of the lives of those in conflict zones so that those in power might see the ramifications of their decisions. She told us,
“Going into a conflict zone takes a great toll on your personal life. …But as a photojournalist you have a responsibility. You have unique access to what unfolds on the ground and it’s important to show policymakers, and others, what’s happening.”
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