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Love+War review – Lynsey Addario’s courageous photojournalism shines out in occasionally odd study

The Pulitzer prize-winner has worked across the developing world, braved war zones and been taken hostage in Libya, but do we really need a tour of her beautiful home?The tumultuous life and career of Pulitzer prize-winning photojournalist Lynsey Addario is the subject of this National Geographic film, produced and directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (who made the climbing documentary Free Solo and the biopic Nyad with Annette Bening as the endurance swimmer Diana Nyad). Addario’s work is certainly amazing and courageous. She has captured compelling images in Ukraine, where her picture of civilian fatalities helped mobilise western opinion against Putin; in Libya, where she was terrifyingly held captive for days along with three other colleagues from the New York Times; and across the developing world where her images of maternal death have been a spur to charitable work around the globe.Addario is a smart, candid interviewee – we also get shots of broadcast-journalism A-listers including Christiane Amanpour and Katie Couric – who is alive to the dangers of adrenalin addiction and a world in which journalists are increasingly considered fair game in war zones. She is alive also, I think, to the dangers of producing images that are too artistically beautiful. Hers is a job for tough people only; one US army officer calls her “as hard as woodpecker lips” and I believe him. Continue reading...

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