Hello, and welcome to the Longform Podcast. I'm one of the co-hosts, Evan Ratliffe. It's

Polk Week here, which means that each day we're talking to one of the winners of this year's

George Polk Awards for journalism. Today, I was fortunate to get to talk to Lindsay Adario,

who is to put it simply one of the greatest photojournalists of this era. Her conflict photography

and other work is incredibly acclaimed. It appears in the New York Times in National Geographic.

She also wrote a memoir some years back that I really recommend. It's called It's What I Do,

which recounts some of the harrowing experiences she has been through in her work, some of which come

up in this interview. But today, we were focused on her photograph that won this year's Polk.

It is a devastating photo of civilians in Ukraine, killed in a Russian attack. It was on the

front page of the New York Times. It went all around the world. It's probably the defining

image of the Ukraine war so far. And we talked about how and why it came about, what her thought

process was around it, and really what it means to take a photo like this. So here's me with

Lindsay Adario.

Well, Lindsay, thank you for coming on the podcast and also congratulations on the Polk Award.

You're welcome. Thank you so much for having me. Before we talk about the photo,

I wanted to ask you a little bit about how you sort of oriented yourself in the war to begin with

and maybe help people understand everything that goes into ending up in the situation where you

took this photo. So when the Russian invasion happens in February of 2022, what is sort of your

response as a photographer? So actually, the New York Times asked me if I would be willing to go

to Ukraine in December. So I think they were obviously ahead of the curve and just trying to get

everyone in line, everyone who would be willing to cover the conflict. And so I entered

Ukraine. I flew into Kiev on the 14th of February 2022. And that was when Russia already had,

...