Published: July 2011
The Moment  Lynsey Addario
The Televised Revolution As protesters raged in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in early February, photographer Lynsey Addario saw it all unfold—on television, in Baghdad. She longed to leave Iraq to cover the breaking story but still had to finish her assignment. So she went out into the city to experience Egypt’s revolution as the Iraqis were doing. At a Baghdad barbershop she found Jalal Khalil (in pink) and his customers following the news. “I was absolutely tortured watching Egypt and the fall of Mubarak on television,” says Addario. “I have been covering the Middle East and South Asia for 11 years now, and while Egypt in particular wasn’t my story, it was extremely difficult to watch history being made on TV. I am used to being in the middle of it!” —Margaret G. Zackowitz

Behind the Lens

Over the next few weeks Addario traveled from Afghanistan to Egypt to Bahrain to Libya, where on March 15—on assignment for the New York Times—she was taken captive at gunpoint by Libyan government forces near the city of Ajdabiya. Apprehended with her were fellow photographer Tyler Hicks, reporter Stephen Farrell, and the Times’s Beirut bureau chief, Anthony Shadid. The journalists, often bound and blindfolded, were shuttled from place to place for three days. No one outside Libya knew their whereabouts. They endured beatings and other abuse from their captors. Finally the group was put on a plane to Tripoli, where diplomatic negotiations for their release got under way. The four were held in a safe house until March 21, when they were transported across the Libyan border to Tunisia—and at last to safety.