Ren Lind
Professor Scott Olsen
IWC 100
20 September 2022
The Unshakable Attachment Between Empathy and Guilt
War photographer Lynsey Addario feels sorrow for her subjects as they are suffering and dying in front of her. Yet, she takes pictures of them and gets her paycheck weeks later. She knows the American troops are often responsible for the suffering, but she submits her photos to American newspapers that make money off the backs of suffering civilians. Is it important to tell a story to the masses or help the individual out in their immediate time of need? How much will a news story help the individuals living in poor, war-torn areas?
Addario is a photojournalist who primarily focuses on the Middle East. In her book, It’s What I Do, she writes about the life-threatening situations she has been through for her job, but her passion for a story drives her to persevere. She believes it’s vital to tell people’s stories that don’t have a voice. Her family rarely knows the full extent of her condition, and there have been times when they thought she was dead. They love her dearly and have always supported her professional decisions, but it wears on them. However, regardless of her safety and loved ones, she feels that the purpose of photojournalism is bigger than herself, and ultimately a profession she can’t live without. Her passion is rooted in empathy for those in need. But at the same time, she’s making her family members anxious, she’s profiting off suffering, and her subjects aren’t always aware that their photos are being taken. Addario isn’t ignorant of the thorns of her job. She feels complex guilt throughout her life with her loved ones and the procedures of her career. Is empathy stronger than guilt or are they intrinsically tied together, one always following the other?
Addario frequently interviews civilians living in war-torn countries and sees them after extremely traumatic events occur. These people experience kidnappings, assaults, bombs, gunshots, disease, poverty, famine, and countless other life-threatening conditions. In these moments, she feels immense sorrow for them. There are tinges of guilt when she asks to take pictures or interview, but she follows through anyway. For instance, she was speaking to a woman that had been kidnapped by five soldiers and raped repeatedly. The woman’s body was thin and weak, and she was emotionally and physically exhausted. Addario wanted to document the woman’s story to the world while remaining respectful of her mental state. Addario wrote, “I didn’t want to monopolize her energy with my questions” (Addario 150). She feels guilty asking so many questions but justifies it with her empathy and the idea that documenting this woman’s story is for a greater purpose. Her empathy and guilt were fighting each other to overpower Adarrio, but Adarrio felt her empathy and good intentions were more important.
Throughout the book, there are multiple occasions where Addario feels guilty for doing her job. There’s a pull between wanting the victims to get justice, and not wanting to exploit their tragedies. For instance, Addario was traveling with an American troop through the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan during a destructive war. An Afghanistan troop found them, and an ambush of gunshots began in full force. One of the men Addario was traveling closely with for months had gotten shot, and everyone woefully knew the young soldier would quickly bleed out. Conflicted, she stated, “I raised my camera in a gesture to ask permission to photograph. I felt horrible asking, but we had been with them for two months, and I knew it was important to document Rougle’s death” (Addario 184). Addario feels called to give suffering people a voice in their most vulnerable moments. In this case, she feels uncomfortable asking, but her empathy for their condition often overruns her guilt when wanting to give people their privacy. Is empathy still honorable if you proceed to do an action that could be seen as exploitative? Does empathy justify exploitative actions? Ultimately, it comes down to the intentions of the individual. Addario isn’t taking advantage of people dying. She’s trying to help victims, even if her method is somewhat unconventional.
When she was in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Addario listened to many emotional stories about women being objectified and assaulted because of their gender. Her vocation drives her to document them, but she feels that her ability to help them is limited. She writes, “As a photojournalist, I felt there was very little I could do for the women in the DRC but record their stories. I hoped awareness of their suffering might somehow save them” (Addario 147). This quote exemplifies that her intentions are sincere. Especially without a position of political power, she’s doing what she can. Her guilt is inconsequential in comparison to the grand scale of the horrors that have occurred to her subjects.
Addario’s loved ones get the brunt of her job. They are at home worrying about her, unsure if she’ll come back from her assignments. Addario wasn’t oblivious to this– she was extremely aware and felt an immense amount of guilt for it. No longer is the empathy directed towards her subjects, but rather her family. There becomes a cycle in which Addario leaves to help suffering people, but her family is left feeling concerned. For example, Addario was working on an assignment about the war ravaging Kabul. She was traveling with an American troop that was overwatching the front lines. It was perilous for an unarmed journalist, and she was aware that her husband, Paul, was back at their home. She writes, “I thought about Paul and was grateful he wasn’t aware of what I was about to do” (Addario 173). The situation with her loved ones is very different from her subjects. In this case, she feels guilty for putting herself in the line of fire for her stories. Her feelings are much more guilt-laden than those of her subjects. However, there’s another aspect to this situation that differs from the intricacies of photojournalism, her putting suffering on her loved ones to help other people. This begs the question, is it okay to put one’s loved ones in jeopardy if it’s to help a stranger? Which person do you feel more empathy and/or guilt towards? Addario deals with this a lot. She constantly contemplated if she should prioritize her loved ones or her subjects. Addarrio wonders if her empathy for family members should overrule her determination to help victims. Though, in her mind, it helps to be upfront with the individuals whom her profession might affect. For instance, Addario had been traveling in Libya for an assignment. The area was very hostile towards journalists, especially American journalists. Her car was asked to stop at a checkpoint, and she and her colleagues were kidnapped and abused for a week. Is this job worth the pain and possibility of kidnappings and death, particularly when their job puts others’ lives in danger? Family members worry when they’re away. However, she writes, “None of us could say that a story was actually worth a life, or worth the pain we caused others. That was ridiculous. But I hoped we’d been clear with our families, our drivers, and our interpreters about how great a risk it was to love us or work with us” (Addario 237). Again, she’s very aware of the pros and cons of her job, the people she helps, and the people she hurts. It’s vital to find the balance between feelings of guilt while having empathy. Addario tries to find her balance by being upfront and honest with those around her. This way if things go south, as they did when she got kidnapped, she knows that her people were fully aware of the consequences of being in her life.
Addario knows that her loved ones don’t want her to be in life-threatening situations. Her guilt keeps creeping up every time a dangerous situation arises. When she got kidnapped in Libya, she had no means of contacting her family. Though they knew she had been taken. She states “The hardest part about what happened to us in Libya was what we had put our loved ones through, but that had long been the excruciating price of the profession– my loved ones suffered, and I suffered when they suffered” (Addario 243). Not only is her situation affecting her loved ones, but through empathy, it’s also affecting her. The difference here is that she felt guilty after the bad thing happened- not before. The other situations had her feeling preemptively guilty, whereas this was never intended to happen. Granted, she knew she was taking a risk in such a dangerous area, so there is room to blame Addario. She’s choosing her profession over her loved ones, but throughout it all, she feels an onslaught of vicious guilt and empathy. There’s so much turmoil over her empathy and guilt battling each other. She consistently feels guilty towards her family for choosing this path, but she feels the career path is vital in spreading awareness for voiceless victims.
As an American, Addario was put in a tough spot while documenting the wars in foreign countries. She frequently witnesses the damage that American troops have bestowed on innocent civilians in foreign countries. Alongside this, Addario is a photojournalist for an American newspaper. She’s seeing firsthand the consequences of her country’s involvement and submitting it back to her country. There’s guilt that goes along with this. Such as when Addario was traveling through checkpoints in Iraq with her colleague. Iraq was wartorn, and Addario’s car drove up to a lawless checkpoint. Men started surrounding the car with guns and questioning their reasons for being there. Her colleague explains, “ ‘We want to write about the civilian deaths, what the Americans are doing to the Iraqis.’ The truth always sounded so convincing” (Addario 119). Her wording suggests that she blames the Americans, not the Iraqis. So, why should she be supporting an American newspaper, if she disagrees with the country’s actions? As mentioned previously, she feels empathy for her subjects and the trauma they’ve experienced. She feels that this job can show Americans what they’ve been doing to innocent civilians. On the other hand, she is directly supporting American journalism, and there’s potential for her story to get misinterpreted and twisted to show support for America. This has happened before, in which Addario had taken numerous pictures representing innocent civilians’ deaths due to American troops. When submitting it to her editor, it got twisted around and they refused to show her angle of the story, instead using an angle that favors America. Angrily she wrote, “the editor trusted the U.S. military public affairs officer– whose main responsibility was to polish the image of the U.S. military to the greater public– over us” (Addario 191). Working with American journalism, her main goal of releasing the real pictures of war got stripped. She felt guilt towards the Afgan people whom she vowed to protect but was now doing the opposite.
Alongside all this, she is an American citizen interacting with these individuals who are being wounded and killed by her fellow Americans. It goes back to the intentions. Her intentions are good, and it can be argued that she’s performing heroic duties that are selfless by risking her safety for others. She could’ve chosen any other job that didn’t revolve around bombs and kidnappings. Her American guilt is overshadowed by her purpose. This applies to life outside of her stories, as well. If guilt is a necessary evil for the good of humanity or the good of an individual, then isn’t it worth it? Even if there’s empathy involved that’s holding you back, overall the purpose is the most important aspect.
Addario self-sacrificed for her job to help other people, but it put some people in harm’s way. To get closer to the scenes, she has to risk people’s lives. Whether it be the driver, translator, information clerk, etc. Who is worth feeling guilt for? Not helping the suffering populations of war-torn countries to get their stories out into the world, or the individuals that are sacrificing themselves for the story? Addario was pregnant, but she didn’t want to stop pursuing photojournalism assignments. She knew there were many risks involved in traveling to a torn country, but she felt she could keep her baby safe. She went into an extremely crowded street, packed full of people. The crowd started pushing in all around her and she suddenly feared she would miscarry with too much pressure on her belly. She states “Naturally no pregnant woman in Gaza would voluntarily be in that mix of madness, but it was too late to lament my stupidity” (Addario 260). In terms of guilt, there is a point at which you have to take fault for your actions, even if you felt empathy. In this scenario, Addario knows that it was wrong to go into the crowd while pregnant, but her drive to pursue a meaningful story was more important. She was willing to risk her and her child’s safety to protect the citizens.
Overall, the theme of empathy and guilt in Lynsey Addario’s It’s What I Do is very expansive to fit each situation. There was no black-and-white answer as to whether or not you should act if there’s guilt involved. After looking at these different scenarios with her family, subjects, and home country, the main deciding factors are these: intentions matter, the purpose of the action, who it could potentially help or harm, and the outcome of the situation. Empathy and guilt travel together. Where there’s empathy, there’s always going to be room for guilt. Possibly you could’ve done something to help, should do something, whatever the case may be, they’re tied together in a thick, entangled knot.
Work Cited
Addario, Lynsey. It’s What I Do; A Photographer’s Life of Love and War. Penguin, 2015.