“You’ll face skepticism, indifference, and rejection, with the added bonus of making as much money as I did in the 1990s as a waitress in Papalini’s (sp) in the Village,” photographer Lynsey Addario told SVA’s class of 2023 in a commencement speach. “But I stand here today as proof that this difficult path is worth it. And I hope I can impart a little wisdom that might serve you well as you embark on your journey.” We often speak on this website about the idea of creating art and not content. But Lynsey is a photojournalist — a profession that requires you to literally speak about the news on a content-based cycle. She didn’t choose the content route though: instead she chose to artistically and humanely tell the stories around the world the people need to hear, and used others the amplify her voice.
All images by Lynsey Addario and used with permission in our interviews. You should absolutely visit her website.
We’ve interviewed Lynsey before on this website. In the past few years, she’s been really passionate about telling the stories about climate change that we don’t really see or hear about here in the United States. She often travels to places where resources are drained, the people are suffering, and things aren’t good. These are some of the issues that have caused the migrant crisis and other wars as the world’s superpowers fight over resources.
These days, it seems to be about oil. But very soon, we could be fighting over fresh water.
If we were to sit here and talk about the idea of content vs art, we’d lean a whole lot more towards saying that Lynsey’s work is art — and her faith in the work she has made has helped her career so much more so than what a standard content creator could dream of.
Why is this?
- Lynsey Addario has photographs that do not conform to an algorithm around trends, commercialism, etc. Her work is instead focused on informing people about the humans at the front of issues the mainstream media doesn’t speak about much.
- She’s a photojournalist first and foremost. A photojournalist’s job is to document iconic moments in time — not to make content. Her work is timeless in that it deserves to be put into history books and studied by many photographers.
- Addario knows that this is a long game; a marathon instead of a sprint, so to speak.
- She mostly covers conflicts. But she’s been trying to cover more stories around climate change. “I have struggled with how to personalize and humanize the topic, and when I started learning about the ways in which climate change affects women and children in particular, I felt like I could effectively tell this story,” she told us. In this way, she found a way to tell her story in a way that rallies to global trends instead of those centered on a social media platform’s algorithms.
- “I focused on how indigenous women are increasingly participating in leadership roles to fight against illegal mining and logging and becoming active in their communities and on social media; in California, I covered the increasing numbers of female firefighters helping fight wildfires in the US,” she told us. “In South Sudan, I focused on how devastating flooding is affecting women’s ability to feed their children, provide adequate shelter, and from accessing prenatal and postnatal care.”
Stories like these are what big publications and outlets care about telling because they’re a different angle and have mass appeal on an important topic.
In the end, new photographers should learn that this is a marathon and not a sprint. Content creation is a sprint. Telling real stories is a marathon that requires you to be authentic.