Why would anyone willingly plunge headfirst into the war-torn areas of Afghanistan, Darfur, or Libya? For Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Lynsey Addario, the short, simple answer is also the title of her memoir: It’s What I Do.

Lynsey has built her career on capturing powerful images in dangerous environments around the world while focusing on humanitarian and human rights issues. Despite death threats and kidnappings, she continues photographing pivotal subjects for National Geographic, the New York Times, and TIME. In this conversation, Lynsey presents a retrospective of her work and explains how her relentless pursuit of truth in virtually every major conflict in the twenty-first century has shaped her life.

Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Lynsey Addario has captured audiences with her disarming and compelling photographs that personalize even the most remote corners of the world. According to Addario, a large part of her work is getting to know her subjects and establishing a sense of intimacy. Her compassion, sensitivity, and unflinching eye capture humane tales from some of the most difficult places on earth. “I am drawn to people with hardship and humanitarian issues,” Addario says. “But I am a storyteller, and I look to convey information.”

In this presentation, Lynsey, a New York Times bestselling author, presents a stunning and personally curated selection of her work from conflict zones across the world. Her powerful and disarming style reveals the major threats to human rights, from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and life in Afghanistan under the Taliban to the stark truth of sub-Saharan Africa and the daily reality of women in the Middle East, to name a few. Addario’s stories and images illustrate the immense human capacity for tragedy and suffering, but also for hope and resilience.

Lynsey Addario was just finding her way as a photographer when September 11th changed the world. One of the few photojournalists with experience in Afghanistan, she got the call to cover the American invasion and had to make a crucial decision—stay at home and lead a quiet and predictable life, or set out across the world and risk her life to make a name for herself. She chose the latter, and continued to for nearly two decades.

In this presentation, Lynsey Addario reveals how, by following the danger, she went from a self-taught street photographer to one of the most brilliant and influential journalists working today—in any medium. Even after enduring the front lines with cameras strapped around her neck, being kidnapped by terrorists, and held at gunpoint, exposing the chaos and conflict happening everywhere in the world remains Addario’s career, and her passion.

Photojournalists in hot zones often concentrate on combat and bloodshed, the action shots that make the front page. But for Lynsey Addario, the truly gripping war stories take place beyond the guns, and in the lives of those affected by war and conflict. With clarity, beauty, and candor, Lynsey documents, often in their most extreme moments, the complex lives of others. It’s her work, but it’s much more than that: it’s her art.

In this presentation, Addario discusses the importance of art in our society and the role it has in making us think, inspiring us, and pushing us out of our comfort zones. With the backdrop of her award-winning photographs, Addario shares the intimate stories of her subjects. She explains how bringing them to a wider audience often dispels stereotypes and misconceptions and brings focus to the major conflicts across the globe.