Lynsey Addario’s RAW, Poignant Photography at Lyles & King

The work of lauded photojournalist, Lynsey Addario graces the walls of Lyles & King Gallery this month in a solo exhibition “RAW”. The two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and best-selling author, known for her memoir “It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War ”, will show over 25 years of her poignant work; including unseen images.

Curated by artist Danny Moynihan, who’s solo show after a 4 year hiatus will soon go on view at Nathalie Karg later this month, this show will certainly attract those familiar with her work as well as those who will be struck by its disquieting beauty for the first time. Addario’s work sheds light on underrepresented figures lost in the sea of large issues, familiarizing the viewer with a face that might otherwise be glazed over as a statistic. The exhibition, aptly titled, is on view through November 9th. While Addario's work often appears on the front pages of The New York Times or in National Geographic, this month it will be showcased in a fine art context, highlighting the lasting significance and impact of her photography.

“The word beauty may not come into it at the moment, it certainly for me is more of a kind of context rather than the aesthetic, I mean the aesthetic thing is fine but it's not of greater interest to me, mine is more the taking, without sounding pretentious, the philosophical aspect of taking a photograph under these conditions,” says Moynihan to art currently.

Shifted from the pages of a newspaper, which might be flippantly glossed over by readers, blown up and framed on white gallery walls instead allows the viewer to linger over the subject for a moment longer, allowing the matter of the photographs to exude their maximum impact. The images, some of which have never been seen before by the public, are allowed to breathe in their own narrative spaces, as the exhibition is a two-part series consisting of one-part landscapes and one-part portraits.

When asked about the themes conveyed by the exhibition, Moynihan declared, “... they are all to do with places in the world were there are troubles, troubled places in the world, Sudan, Afghanistan, Ukraine they are all places of conflict so it's so much as, the two aspects of them, one is obviously the human element and the second is the landscapes.”

Addario’s work presents an innate conflict between the pictorial beauty and horror of the subject within them, a sense of friction that will be amplified by the partition between landscapes and portraits within the show, demonstrating the horrific effects of war and social issues on both people and places simultaneously. The show comes at a perfect time to further the sentiments surrounding the profound effects of photography in direct correlation to U.S. activism.