National Geographic Live! - Lynsey addario - Lens on the front line

LYNSEY: Pummeled with tank fire mortar rounds. Riots for bread. Women who tried to commit suicide by setting themselves on fire. Many, many women were dying in child birth. I was kidnapped by Gaddafi's troops. There was no place to hide. (applause) So I was 26 the first time I went to Afghanistan. And I had been living in India at the time. And I had a roommate who went to Afghanistan under the Taliban and he came back and he said, "You know, you are a woman. You should go to Afghanistan and photograph women living under the Taliban, because no one's doing it." And he didn't tell me that photography was illegal at the time, that you couldn't photograph any living thing. And that there was no American Embassy, and that the only governing body was the Taliban, which was ruled by Sharia law. But I was 26 and I didn't care, and so, I went. And I took some pictures of women. I kept my cameras in my bag, and I ran around to people's homes. And I went to the hospitals-- this was a women's hospital in 2000. There was no medicine, very few doctors. This was a woman in labor. This is a very typical scene on the streets of Kabul. This was the capital at the time. There were almost no cars. Women beggars were really the only women you would ever see on the street. Any form of entertainment was illegal. There was no music, no television, and no cell phone. So, when I would go to Afghanistan at the time, I would literally fall off the face of the planet. I would have no idea what was happening outside of Afghanistan. This scene happened. I was out at a refugee camp because there was a drought in Herat, which was western Afghanistan. And I was with my driver and he said, "Madam, I have to go early, because my brother is getting married." And I said, "Great. Let's go to your brother's wedding." So, he took me in. I brought one camera, one lens and I hung out. And I had been on a street, like the picture you had just seen. And we descended down these stairs and the Titanic was blasting. And men and women were dancing together. And this was all under the Taliban in secret. About 9 years later, National Geographic assigned me to photograph women in Afghanistan. And I spent about 2 years photographing. And the changes that had been made were astonishing to me. I had been working pretty much consistently in Afghanistan since 2000, so I went almost every year. And my last trip was about 5 months ago. This is a wedding. The man on the right is the father of the groom and he is a filmmaker in Afghanistan. This is a typical scene of a midwife. This is in Badakhshan Province. And that province has very few roads. So, many, many women die in childbirth in Afghanistan, mostly because of the lack of access to hospitals and doctors. So, what you see here is a woman, a midwife from Merlin, and she would go out into very remote villages and they would make an announcement at the mosque. And pregnant women and women with young children would come and meet with her. And after spending about two weeks in Badakhshan Province, I was driving back to Fayzabad, which is the capital. And I notice these two women on the side of the mountain. And I said, "That's strange, there's no man with those women." And anyone who's worked extensively in Afghanistan knows that there was always a man with the women. So we stop the car and Dr. Zieba, who was my translator and an amazing Afghan woman, she jumped out and we ran up the mountain and she said, "What's going on?" And the woman on the right was in labor, and her water had just broken. And they had rented a car and her husband's first wife had died in childbirth. And he was so determined to not have a second wife die in childbirth that he rented this car, and they were driving from their village to Fayzabad, the capital, and their car broke down. And so I said, "Get in my car and I'll take you to the hospital." And they said, "We can't. We need the permission of her husband." And so I said, "Dr. Zieba, go find the husband." And fortunately there was a one road that led throughout the whole province. So, she took our car and she found the husband. They all came in my car, and she delivered. Everyone always asks me if I took-- if I have pictures of her delivering. And I stopped photographing at the point that I left them, that I put them in my car, because I changed the story as a journalist and I didn't feel like it was ethical to keep photographing. Many women in Afghanistan end up in prison simply for asking for a divorce, for doing things that in the west, we would see as not justifiable to end up in prison. This is Mida Hall. She was married at a very young age to a man who was decades older than her. He was handicapped, so every day her duties as a wife were to bathe him and to take care of him and feed him. When she was 21, she asked for a divorce and she was thrown in prison by his brothers. This is a young woman. Women in Afghanistan who are unhappy or who are ashamed, they don't take a gun and try and commit suicide the way that we would try to or that's more typical in the west. They set themselves on fire. And many of those women don't die. So, I did a series for The New York Times on women who tried to commit suicide by setting themselves on fire. This young woman had been accused by her neighbors of stealing. And she was so ashamed that she tried to kill herself. And she died a few days after that picture. With the Americans in Afghanistan, one thing they tried to do was train up a police force of women. And this is at a shooting range outside of Kabul. Education has really picked up in Kabul, that's something when I first I used to go, there were secret girl schools in people's homes, hidden from the Taliban. And now you see women graduating. This is a women's boxing team. This is a woman in parliament. They're women in parliament, sorry. There are soap operas with women and women actresses. This is a soap opera set, in Kabul. This is Trina. She is an actress. She did soap operas and she was also in some movies. So, in 2009 and 2010, I accompanied the Marines' female engagement teams, throughout Helmand Province. This was a program, started by the Marines, to have American women engage Afghan women, because many of the Marines-- all the Marines operating in Helmand Province were men. And there was a whole 50% of the society, they couldn't-- they couldn't engage. And they couldn't go into people's homes. So, they brought women in. And they had them talk to Afghan women, look at them for basic medical treatment. It was fascinating for me, because I had been embedding with the military for many, many years, but I was always the only woman. So, it was the first time that I was able to be around women, to go around and see how they operate in this hostile environment. This is a female Blackhawk Pilot, Jesse. And she used to go in and pick up the injured. She was working with the Medevac Team. This is them, training. This is all in Helmand Province: cleaning their guns, relaxing at night. And it was the first time-- You know, usually when I embed with the military, there's no place for me to sleep. It's always this big crisis, where is the female journalist gonna sleep. And so, I finally was able to sleep in a normal cot with a bunch of women, which was really fun. And I loved seeing them still try and do their makeup and be feminine even on the front lines. And we patrolled. And we were shot at. This was before 2013, when women were allowed on the frontlines. So, this is all in 2010. (audience laughing) I love this picture. In 2009, I was given a MacArthur Fellowship and I wanted to focus on maternal mortality, and why women die in childbirth. And so-- And it's a body of work that I have been doing now for about 5 years. I went to Sierra Leone, to photograph in the Magburaka government hospital. It was a place that I knew many, many women were dying in childbirth. I went there one day and met Mama Sise. She was a woman who was pregnant with twins. She gave birth to the first twin in the village, and the second twin wouldn't come out. So, she took a canoe across the river. There was an ambulance waiting for her across the river. And she drove about 4 hours, across bumpy roads, to get to the hospital. And this is when I met her. She had delivered the first baby about 24 hours earlier. She was so scared and tired to push, because she was just exhausted. And she finally gave birth and the baby was-- I thought, was still born. But the nurses spent about 45 minutes resuscitating the baby. And they have very little there. They don't have traditional machines like we do that can-- oxygen and everything. They're literally smacking the baby and trying to bring the baby back to life. In that time, Mama Sise started bleeding. I thought there was something wrong, but I'm not a doctor, I'm just a photo-journalist. And so I kept asking, "Why is she bleeding so much?" And they were just mopping up the blood and saying she's fine. Finally, I went to go get the doctor, and he was in surgery. When I came back, her blood pressure was down to 60 over 40. They picked her up and carried her across the hospital where the doctor was. There was one doctor in the entire province. And by the time she got there, she died. This is her sister who was also a midwife, who had arranged to send her that ambulance because she didn't want her to die. This is the mother finding out that her daughter has just died. And this is in the ambulance. I went home with her body... and photographed the rituals surrounding her death and her burial. So, two years later I got a call from Doctors Without Borders, MSF. And they said, "We saw the story you did. And since then we've put five ambulances in Bo province," in this one province next to that province I'd been in. And they offer 24 hour emergency service to women in Sierra Leone, in that province, and they gave each of the small clinics in the villages a radio. So, when a woman went into the clinic with complications, they could call for an ambulance. And they said, "With that, we've reduced the maternal mortality rate by 60%." ( indistinct chattering ) ( indistinct chattering continues ) ( speaking in foreign language ) You're almost there. ( Aboriginals singing ) ( speaking in foreign language ) ( baby crying ) ( Aboriginals singing ) ( applause ) In 2011-- It was February of 2011, and I had watched the Arab Spring unfold from-- On TV while I was sitting in Iraq. And when I was in Afghanistan, and then, Bahrain. I was always in the wrong place. So, I called The New York Times and I said, "I am going to Libya, whether you want to send me or not." So, I went to Libya. Like most journalists, I crossed illegally from Egypt into Eastern Libya. That was really the only way to do it, because any journalist who wants to cover an uprising, the government generally doesn't want journalists there. So, you have to sneak in. When I got there, it was very euphoric. People were really celebrating the uprising. A parallel government was being set up. There were demonstrations. People were really happy. They thought Gaddafi was gonna fall quickly. They called people to fight against Gaddafi's troops, and they were clearly untrained. There were doctors, engineers, teachers, learning how to use weapons. Immigrants were fleeing. People who had gone to Libya to work, were trying to get boats out of the country. They felt that the fighting was imminent. And in Benghazi, there was really an air of tension. About a week after I got there, some rebels started pushing forward towards the front line. And a handful of photographers-- It's always the crazy photographers who go forward. We started moving forward with Gaddafi's troops. We ended up on the front line. This is Ra's Lanuf. What you see in the background is an oil refinery. And we followed them, as cities fell from Gaddafi's hands into rebel hands. They went in, they would shoot out pictures of Gaddafi, go into homes. The fighting was really disproportionate. Gaddafi had a trained military, and we were with the rebels. So, this is an example of -- We were on the front line. It was one road that sliced through the desert, from west to east. One day, we were on the front line when a helicopter gunship came in directly above us and started spraying the ground around us with .50 caliber bullets, like this big. They had to fight back with Kalashnikovs. Some of the soldiers-- Some of the rebels were throwing rocks up into the air. Many times, they just turned around and fled when Gaddafi's military approached. We had been sort of spoiled by being with the American military, the Marines in Afghanistan and Iraq. And it was very different. This particular day, we were being pummeled with tank fire, mortar rounds. We would just follow the front line, as it pushed back and forward. We were really trying to get a sense of what was happening. And it was before the no-fly zone was put in place. So, as journalists, we really wanted to show what was happening so that-- While the no-fly zone was being deliberated, we can provide a firsthand picture of what was happening on the ground. The rebels were really getting injured and killed around us. The fighting was very, very intense. There was no place to hide. We would be on the front line and we would hear the hum of an aircraft. And you would literally just hope that the bomb didn't land on top of you. Cower in fear. This particular bomb landed about 100, 200 feet from where we were standing. And we pushed forward with them, as they took more ground. Several days after that I took this picture, I was kidnapped by Gaddafi's troops with three other journalists for The New York Times. So, that was the last picture in that series. Luckily, I had a premonition that something might happen, so I sent a hard drive out with a colleague and said, "if I get taken, please send this to my agency." And that's how I was able to salvage all my pictures. Last year, I wanted to cover what was happening in Syria. But my family begged me not to go into Syria. So, I started covering the refugee crisis. I've made eight trips to the region: Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Northern Iraq, and I did go once into Syria. And so, this is a collection of photos with the Syrian refugees. These are refugees streaming into Northern Iraq. And this is them waiting for handouts in Northern Iraq, after arriving. This is a food distribution in Zaatari, when there were riots for bread. This is a family arriving in Zaatari for the first time, and when they're getting registered with the United Nations, in Zaatari. And a family sleeping outside, at dawn, in Iraq. This is a funeral for a rebel fighter. And they're cooking. The body was still in Syria, but this is the family cooking. People were living in caves, in Lebanon. I went back to these caves several months ago, and the families have all been moved into makeshift camps. There are no camps in Lebanon, because the Lebanese government is-- Does not want formal camps set up. This is at a bread distribution, in Zaatari. And these are the camps on the Syrian side of the border. People were living in raw sewage. There were no NGOs working there except IHH, a Turkish NGO at the time. And this is in Syria. He was a former fighter and he was living in a school with his family. This is outside of a smuggler's village in Turkey. I was waiting to try and photograph the exodus of refugees coming out of Syria. And it's a picture that's very, very difficult to get as a photographer now, because all of the neighboring countries have really shut down their borders. So, I stood outside of the smuggler's village, because I knew that they were crossing there. And every hour or so, someone would come up to me and say, "Get out of here, we're gonna kill you." And one guy came up to me and he said, "I'm gonna go get my knife." Another guy came up to me and said, "Just wait until dark, because when dark comes, you'll see all the refugees." So, I put my cameras in my bag and I waited. And, of course, at dark they all started streaming out. This is a family living in a camp across from a formal camp, in Turkey. They were literally living under the trees. And this is that same camp. I just want to show you a few on-assignment pictures, because I think it's funny. This was me in 2001, in Pakistan. This is me, in Fallujah. Crossing illegally into Darfur, to cover the war in Darfur. We had to walk for three kilometers, most of that through wadis. This is-- We had lived on the back of this pickup truck for five days, driving through the desert in Darfur. This is the Korangal Valley, in Afghanistan. I was embedded with the 173rd. That's me and my colleague, in Afghanistan. That's me and that same colleague. ( laughter ) Sort of like being an actor. And this is us hiding in that silo, in Libya, on the front line. And this is us on the front line. That's me with Tyler Hicks. And we were taken together. That's Gary Cosgrove and Nikki Sobecki. And this is an example of where we stay typically, in Libya, on the front line. People-- Libyans would just open their homes to journalists who were there. And for example, in this particular house, there were 17 journalists sleeping. And every night , we got a knock on the door at about 6:00, and it was a 10-year-old Libyan boy. He would come with a giant tray of food and just set it down and leave. And so, the women who were still in the village would cook for us every night. And on the upper right is Anthony Shadid. He is a colleague, and he died in Syria last year of an asthma attack. And that's it. ( applause )