Seth Kotzbacher
Prof. W. Scott Olsen
IWC 100
8 October 2021
The Key to a Well-Balanced Life
Do you believe a well-balanced life is attainable? Many people take for granted the easy-going life they experience, hanging out with friends, playing sports, and enjoying life. In the case of a young photojournalist, Lynsey Addario, the easy-going life is not so easy to attain. She moved across the globe while still performing her job at the highest level possible and opening her life up to a partner. Addario explains her unbalanced work and love life in her book, It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War, but this ultimately changes for the better when she meets people that could complement her work and give her the love she desires.
During her childhood, Addario was the youngest of four sisters and lived in Westport, Connecticut, with her family of six. These four girls were supported by Phillip and Camille, their parents, and they lived a generous lifestyle. The reason behind this lifestyle was their salon shop, named Phillip Coiffures, that Phillip and Camille owned together. The salon shop introduced the Addario family to an array of people to whom the house would serve as a haven. These people invited to stay ranged from, but were not limited to, gays, drug addicts, and transgender people. This upbringing was never in question to Lynsey as this was what was normal to her. When she was eight, Phillip left the family and went to New York. He was coming out as gay. Gay was a confusing topic to Addario, and she treated her father and his partner, Bruce, no differently than two dads. She appreciated her father following the true love of his life and stated, “I’d grown up my whole life witnessing the sorrow of outcasts, but I accepted that my father had found the happiness he’d longed for” (Addario 23). Throughout her life, Addario could be considered an outcast because she was work-oriented. Other than the occasional visits to New York, Phillip was irrelevant to his four daughters and wife. The salon took a hit, and Phillip finally broke away from it to create his own with Bruce. Addario, her mother, and three other sisters suffered from this in which they could not continue to live the lifestyle they had grown accustomed to.
During a rare visit to her father’s house, Phillip gifted Addario her first camera, a Nikon FG. This was a fortuitous exchange. Wanting to capture pictures, she taught herself the basics of photography and was fascinated by it. Addario’s passion for photography continued when she went to college at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. After this, she traveled to Bologna, where she could experiment with her photography. Addario took advantage of her newfound skills and traveled to Buenos Aires because “Taking pictures became a way for [her] to travel with a purpose” (Addario 25). She had little to no experience with photography but moved to South America to follow something she loved.
With being a newfound photojournalist, there are many struggles Addario faces. Throughout this story, she constantly worried about her social/love life as she could not establish herself in a specific area because of the constant traveling, which took a toll on her. As Addario stated early in her career, “I envisioned a nomadic life of adventure for myself, but I worried sometimes whether I was condemning myself to a spinster’s future: forever single, having affairs with random men, my cameras dangling all over me” (Addario 40). Addario received an invitation to go overseas to India with a family friend in this situation. The city of New Delhi was a ripe place to take photos, with the many different personalities and colors to make a great picture. Traveling abroad was still a relatively scary situation for Addario, with this only being her third trip outside of America solely regarding photojournalism. In New Delhi, Addario stayed with two foreign correspondents, which made her uneasy about her decision to travel to India. Although these new roommates explained their troubles of being a photojournalist, she still dreamed of this kind of life for herself, traveling all over the world and being able to do something she loved with minor restrictions. She looked forward to the adventure of going to new destinations and experiencing new cultures but also had the thought of not being able to settle down.
Lynsey Addario’s desire was never-ending throughout the story, and her independence only added to this. She wanted to love and be loved by someone, although this was not the case while her mind was distracted by her work. When Baghdad fell in April of 2003, Addario was positioned in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq. She raced with her colleagues from the pleasant greens and mountains to the bland color of sand, all the while still capturing photos along the way. When Addario arrived in Mosul, she had the chance to meet with General David Petraeus in one of the major bases that the Americans had set up in an abandoned palace. That first night in the palace, Addario found herself looking out on the city from a terrace and thought to herself, “I had a good day of shooting behind me and another one ahead of me. I just smiled out there, alone on the balcony, and knew that this feeling could sustain me forever” (Addario 99). This shows that Addario was a powerful and independent woman who could live by herself and live a complete life with her camera only. She got the adrenaline rush from taking pictures in a high-risk situation that she knew could touch people. This quote describes the kind of nomadic life that she has always seen herself fulfill, living by each day, not knowing where she will end up in a month, and exploring the world one photo at a time. Once again, Addario was staying in a room with people she had just met, this time with a group of around 30 soldiers in a room located in one of Saddam’s palaces in Mosul.
Although Addario enjoyed being out by herself in foreign countries, she also wanted a companion to return to. She would spend weeks abroad at work and would not have time to connect to people outside of her colleagues. Addario described this feeling of loneliness as “I often lived with an aching emptiness inside me” (Addario 61). Much of Addario’s life is fulfilled with her camera, but there were always instances in which her camera could not make up for it. In this situation, Addario was traveling through Afghanistan, India, Nepal, and Pakistan when her brother-in-law was diagnosed with cancer, and her mother got severely injured in a car accident. Her immediate family excluded her from this critical information. This more than likely made Addario feel like an outsider from her own family. They didn’t share this information because she was too far away and wouldn’t have done anything with this heartbreaking news. On top of this, she did not have a romantic partner at the time. This aching emptiness could be interpreted as a void in her life she has yet to fill. She could be worried that this adventurous lifestyle could lead to her not starting a family of her own one day. This spinster future didn’t look like too far of a reach for Addario, after all.
Soon enough, she found a partner that could fit her needs for the time being. Whenever Addario was inside of Mexico City, she was spending her long days with Uxval. Uxval made for a decisive man and a romance she had never felt before. The only barrier in their relationship was her photography. She had many aspirations in her career, working longer assignments that she could immerse herself in, shooting for the New York Times, and ultimately wanting people to be affected by her work. Uxval was not a flexible partner, which makes all of this very difficult for Addario to pursue. As Addario stated early in their romance, “The only thing I could not give him was my photography” (Addario 64). This displays Addario’s priorities firsthand, stating it plain and simple. She would be choosing her photojournalist career over her love life with Uxval. This decision by Addario unsettled Uxval very much, he wanted a girlfriend that would always be with him, and an internet girlfriend would suffice for him. One could see this choice as selfish, which it might be, but a true companion would encourage their work-life and not try to withhold them from it. Just as their relationship was taking off, the horrible events at the twin towers took place. This meant that the United States was at war with the Taliban. She knew what she had to do next, a decision in which could affect her career for the rest of her life. Addario exclaimed to her roommate at the time, “I had watched the most historic event of my lifetime on a borrowed television set in Mexico City, and I wasn’t about to miss the second half of the story” (Addario 65). As she thought between her job and Uxval, Addario explained that “This was the first time I had to decide between my personal and professional lives. Some part of me knew, or hoped, that real love should complement my work, not take away from it” (Addario 66). Knowing that this moment would affect her relationship with Uxval, she booked a ticket to New York immediately. This shows again that Addario prioritized chasing the next big story rather than a romantic relationship with her lover. She valued her photography.
After spending less than a month in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Addario finally received an email stating that Uxval no longer wanted to be part of this relationship. He claimed that she was not in the present with him, therefore he could not be in a relationship with her. Addario pleaded to him to let her stay in the area for a couple more weeks so she could capture the start of the war, Uxval did not give in. On the other hand, Addario decided she needed a break from all the commotion and returned to Mexico City, with Uxval awaiting her arrival. After she always talked about her career and its importance, Addario chose love over her photography. She was not satisfied with this decision. She sat at home over being in Kabul and watching the city fall and felt uneasy that she was watching historic moments take place on television. Addario knew she made the wrong decision, but there was something about Uxval that just made her gravitate towards him no matter the situation.
Shortly after going back to Mexico City to please Uxval, Addario was already on her way back overseas. Right away, she received the best advice that would have changed her life if she had followed it sooner. In Quetta, Addario was chatting with Gilles Perres, a seasoned reporter overseas due to the recent war. When Uxval got brought up in the conversation, she took this away from the conversation, “Someday I would know what Gilles meant: that in this profession relationships ended in either infidelity or estrangement. A dual life was unsustainable” (Addario 78-79). This thought from Gilles solidified what Addario had thought when getting into a relationship with Uxval. If Gilles Perres couldn’t do it, what would make Addario able to do it?
With the continued evidence that the relationship with Uxval wouldn’t work out, she returned home to an Uxval that no longer remained faithful to his partner. Addario fell into a deep depression and decided to move to Istanbul, in which Uxval followed her and continued his traitorous actions towards her. At this point, she was infused entirely in her work and had no time for Uxval’s childish behaviors and ignored them completely. She still loved him, and he filled up her apartment when she was gone and gave her someone to come home to.
One time when Uxval came to visit Addario in Baghdad, she decided to cut ties with him being there were no more romantic feelings between them, they had just gone through the motions. She ushered him back to Mexico City with most of the cash she had remaining and, “It was the first time in years [she] felt free” (Addario 114). Well, if Addario felt trapped, why didn’t she escape this toxic relationship earlier? She felt the need to come home to someone to spend her nights with when she didn’t dedicate her mind towards her craft. Her sense of free means that she is now unleashed from the constraints of others and has the choice to go wherever she desires without other people suffering. In a way, Addario felt guilty for leaving Uxval behind all the time since she did love him. Now she could go wherever in the world she wanted without having the thought of Uxval in her mind.
At the end of her relationship with Uxval, Addario fell for a colleague, Matthew. They become a powerhouse in Iraq, a photographer and writer team. This duo blossomed in Iraq because their work could relate so well to each other. Although this relationship worked so well in Iraq, the reality of it was that they both knew it would not work outside of this setting. They took one vacation together to decompression and then said their goodbyes. When the common questions arose of why she did not have a husband or kids, Addario stated she was too busy. She realized to a greater extent that, “The reality was that I could offer little to a man other than passionate affairs and a few days a month between assignments. Romantic feelings in a war zone were exaggerated by the intensity of every day; one month in Iraq alongside someone was equivalent to six months in the normal world. Our love never would have flourished anywhere but Iraq” (Addario 132). In the scenario, the relationship wouldn’t have worked with Matthew outside of their work life. During their work, life was seamless, they worked great together and had no significant bumps in the relationship. Although they never tested if it would have worked outside of their time in Iraq, they both knew the situation and how it would have ended; therefore, the decision to call it quits early remained. However, on the other hand, the relationship with Uxval only worked outside of work because of his need for her physical presence. Life while at work was a nightmare for her since Uxval could not handle her being gone.
Addario began a friendship with a man named Paul later in the story. A companionship was born with Paul, and immediately they became best friends in which they called each other every night. A couple of months earlier, Paul had just come out of a serious relationship with his girlfriend. Addario thought nothing of this situation, pretty much accepting that she would spend the rest of her life single. Over the months, she slowly felt herself becoming closer with Paul and wanting his attention every day. One night everything changed. They went out for dinner like they usually did when he visited Istanbul. Although this was the usual dinner they had planned like the previous ones, this one felt different to both of them. After the dinner was over, they stood under a streetlamp together, getting ready to kiss. Just then, their friend Ivan walked by and prevented them from kissing at this moment. A few weeks later, they spent the night together after a get-together with some friends. When she woke up with him in the morning, Addario had felt as if she could spend the rest of her life with Paul.
While dating Paul, they both understood each other’s work life and their life at home. Addario had finally found someone who knew the demands of her job since he knew of that pressure firsthand. Realizing that she had found the balance in a relationship she needed, she stated, “I turned off the trauma and sadness of my work in order to enjoy my happiness with Paul. Walking between worlds is one of the great privileges of the foreign correspondent” (Addario 192). She could finally go between her two loves and passions without compromising the other. In the previous two relationships, she had to choose one side or the other. With Paul, she didn’t have to worry about which to choose, she could do what she wanted. With this reasonably new partnership expanding into a love that Addario and Paul both had never experienced before, Paul asked Addario to marry him. Her response was yes, of course. Addario has finally solved the years of emptiness in her stomach that she felt when away from her first passion in photography. She could enjoy life at home with her lover and life in the career she loved as well.
At the peak of her career, Addario and Paul decided it was time for a child. After all, she was happy with every aspect of her life. She had found the way to balance her two loves at the time, now adding a third. Addario explained that “I met deadlines and editors’ needs while weaving in time for Lukas between assignments; the balance was possible because I worked with trusted editors who were supportive of my new role as mother, and because I had a partner, Paul, who was a hands-on father and a champion of my work” (Addario 268). She was now finding time for Paul and a child while still working to the extent she used to. This was all because Paul was a complement to Addario and her work life and vice versa. She now had a life in which she had to think not just for herself but also for her family, which might take some getting used to for Addario because she has always been so work oriented.
Lynsey Addario experienced a life in which she searched for the right person to help her coexist with work and love at the same time. Her time with Uxval and Matthew both taught her valuable lessons in which she kept in mind for her last relationship with Paul. Two things you are very passionate about tend not to have an easy time existing simultaneously, but it might take years to find this perfect piece to your life. How long are you willing to wait to create a well-balanced life for yourself?
Works Cited
Addario, Lynsey. It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War. Penguin
Books, 2016.