NEW YORK, NY (September 22, 2009) – Photojournalist Lynsey Addario has been given a prestigious "genius award" of $500,000 from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, it was announced today.
Addario, 35, based in Istanbul, regularly shoots for The New York Times and National Geographic.
Earlier this year she escaped serious injury in an automobile accident in Pakistan that killed her driver and seriously injured another journalist. They were returning to Islamabad from covering refugees in a camp at the time.
In 2009, Addario shared a Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting with New York Times staff members.
The MacArthur Fellowship is $100,000 a year for five years, with no strings attached, and is granted with the expectation of being a reward for work yet to come. The president of the MarArthur Foundation said the grants are "distinctive," because they are intended to urge the recipient to "continue your work in a creative way, without anyone looking over your shoulder."
The fellowships are open to American citizens and the winners must be nominated, there is no application process. The MacArthur Foundation announced 24 winners of this year's fellowships this morning in New York. Among the winners are a mixed-media artist, a poet, writers, a bridge engineer, an infectious disease doctor, a journalist who focuses on cold-case murders, and a scientist.
In 2000, she started photographing conflict and humanitarian issues. In addition to the Pulitzer, she won the Getty Images Grant for Editorial Photography in 2008 for her work in Darfur. In 2008 she was also named a Fellow at the Columbia College of Women in the Arts in Chicago.
Addario is a 1991 graduate of Staples High School who started shooting for the Buenos Aires Herald in Argentina in 1996 with, as she says, "no professional photographic training." She's also a 1995 graduate of the University of Wisconsin where she graduated with honors, and the photojournalist speaks Spanish and Italian in addition to her native English.
