Connecticut's Lynsey Addario Among TIME's 100 Most Influential People in the World

When TIME magazine recently published a highly anticipated list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World, one name on the list had a birthplace in Connecticut – renowned, award-winning photojournalist Lynsey Addario.  She was name among 14 “Titans,” and the profile that highlighted her career was authored by veteran journalist Katie Couric.

Couric wrote of Addario:  “Lynsey’s photos leave an indelible impression:  A grief-stricken Ukrainian teacher being handed an assault rifle to fulfill her patriotic duty.  Young girls in burqas reaching out, almost through the camera, as boys in T-shirt and shorts run and play around them.  A makeshift hospital room where somehow, some way, an infant in a war zone is getting an IV drip and oxygen.”

“If 2026 has taught us anything,” she continues, “it’s the power of images.  The people and places Lynsey captures may be strangers in foreign lands, but they remind us of our shared humanity.  You don’t just look at Lynsey’s photos.  You feel them – as if you are there.  But you don’t have to be, because she is, risking her life and making us care.”

A Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist who has covered major conflict zones around the world, Addario delivered the 2023 Gruber Distinguished Lecture in Global Justice at Yale University.  The Yale website explains that “Ms. Addario highlighted her professional experiences capturing the lives of ordinary people, particularly women and children, during times of conflict. She first spoke how she became a war photographer, starting with a 1970s photo of her family in Connecticut. As the youngest of four daughters, she forged her own path, distinct from her own family’s modest one.

Ms. Addario moved to India in 2000 to become a foreign correspondent and was encouraged by a colleague to go to Afghanistan under Taliban rule to document women's lives.”

In 2028, Addario was interviewed on Connecticut Public Radio by Lucy Nalpathanchil, where she reflected on her upbringing in Connecticut, including her attendance at Staples High School, and that she has been living mainly outside of the United States since she was in her 20s.  She credits her hometown's creative community and her father’s gift of a Nikon camera for launching her interest in photography.  That interview can be heard here:  https://www.ctpublic.org/arts-and-culture/2018-11-05/connecticut-native-lynsey-addario-on-photojournalism-of-love-war   Her work was also highlighted by the Connecticut Post in 2015.  That story can be seen here.

A British broadcasting podcast video interview last year with Lynsey Addario can be seen here.