Of Love & War

Starred review from July 16, 2018
This astonishing selection of photos from photojournalist Addario (It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War) strongly demonstrates her conviction that by risking her life to cover gross injustices she can create visual and visceral proof of human rights violations. Addario’s two decades of documenting wrongs begins with her work on life under the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Photos of children at play in cemeteries, a crowded room in a secret school for girls near Kabul, and a prisoner chained to the wall at an underground prison are interspersed with personal letters from Addario to her family and loved ones, her own field notes, and contact sheets. Later sections feature images of war-torn Iraq and Libya, groups of refugees on the move, and conflict in Congo and South Sudan. There’s a powerful series from the maternity ward at Magburaka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone, featuring a woman giving birth on a blood-soaked floor and a mother spoon-feeding her adult daughter, who was in a coma after having her first child. Addario’s photographs are stunning, and this book, which she dedicates to the “brave and resilient” women and men she’s documented, provides unique insight into the vital work of photojournalists. Color photos.

June 1, 2018

Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Addario stuns us into awareness with 200-plus photographs featuring the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa.

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