Lynsey Addario photographed by Sam Taylor Johnson.
Next month, SVA will honor acclaimed photographer, MacArthur “Genius Grant” and Pulitzer Prize recipient Lynsey Addario with its 32nd annual Master Series Award and Exhibition. Curated by Maya Benton and Perri Hofmann, “The Masters Series: Lynsey Addario” will be a comprehensive retrospective of her fearless, two-decade journey documenting global humanitarian issues. The exhibition will be on view from Friday, September 2 through Saturday, October 29, 2022, at the SVA Chelsea Gallery. Admission is free and open to the public. SVA will also host an artist talk with Addario on Friday, September 9, 2022, at the SVA Theatre. “The Masters Series: Lynsey Addario” is presented with support from Hahnemühle, Nikon and Verbatim Photo.
“It is an incredible honor to be selected for the SVA Masters Series,” says Addario. “At a time when truth is being disputed and journalism is under attack, the visibility SVA brings to the content and issues in my photographs helps highlight the importance of photography in fostering a better understanding of the world around us. I hope the exhibition will give people a greater perspective beyond the borders of the United States. I hope the images are educational and insightful and provide historical context to wars and humanitarian crises of the past two decades.”
Established in 1988 by the College’s founder, Silas Rhodes, the Masters Series honors groundbreaking visual communicators whose diverse and multidisciplinary works are widely recognized and celebrated but whose names are less well-known by the general public. Addario’s show, originally planned for the fall of 2020, has been delayed for the past two years by COVID-19 precautions.
Born and raised in Connecticut, Lynsey Addario moved to Argentina after graduating from college in the 1990s, beginning her photojournalism career, despite having no prior experience, at the Buenos Aires Herald. Her work has since taken her all over the globe, often to places riven by armed conflict, natural disasters and other humanitarian crises. She has photographed the fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq; asylum-seeking Syrian refugees; wildfires in California; flooding in South Sudan; English funeral homes during the coronavirus pandemic; and Afghanistan both before and during America’s 20-year war in the country. Her work often centers on women’s welfare, shining a light on the borderless scourges of gender-based violence, rape as a weapon of war and maternal mortality.
Soldiers with the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army sit by their truck, waiting for it to be repaired, as a sandstorm approaches in Darfur, Sudan, August 2004.
Addario is the author of Of Love and War (2018, Penguin Press), her first solo collection of photography, and the New York Times best-selling memoir It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War (2015, Penguin Press), which chronicles her personal and professional life as a photojournalist coming of age in the post-9/11 world and many near-death experiences, including two kidnappings and a Taliban ambush while with the 173rd Airborne in the Korengal Valley.
In 2015, American Photo Magazine named her one of the five most influential photographers of the past 25 years, saying she changed how we saw world conflicts. Her work has also appeared in National Geographic Magazine and Time Magazine. She has received The Overseas Press Club's Olivier Rebbot Award, National Geographic Society’s Eliza Scidmore Award for Outstanding Storytelling and two Emmy Award nominations.
In the two years since this exhibition was initially intended, Addario has been prolific in continuing to document the major news events of our time, from the war in Tigray to hospital wards during the pandemic, vaccination efforts in South Sudan, and women on the frontlines of climate change. Most recently, Addario’s photographs of the war being waged on Ukraine and its people have transfixed the world, particularly the heart-wrenching image of Tetiana Perebynis and her two children, who were killed as they tried to flee Irpin, near Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv.
Addario has brought a strong focus to women’s issues in her work, including gender-based violence and rape as a weapon of war—topics covered in a traveling exhibition she did with Columbia College of Chicago in 2008. She also began work on a long-term project on maternal mortality in 2009, documenting complications associated with women dying in childbirth in places including Sierra Leone, India, the Philippines and the United States.
Note: The SVA Chelsea Gallery is open Monday through Saturday, from 10:00am to 6:00pm, and closed on Sundays. The public may visit by showing proof of full vaccination (including booster, if eligible) and photo ID. Proper masking is required. It is fully accessible by wheelchair.
