two women in burkhas along a mountainous coast

The life-and-death story behind an acclaimed photo

While journalists are cautioned in school not to get involved in the story, some help in different ways.

BADAKHSHAN PROVINCE, Afghanistan—Among the subjects that have long compelled London-based photographer Lynsey Addario: maternal mortality, which she has documented in many countries; and the difficult lives of women in modern Afghanistan. The drama she encountered on a rural Afghan road in December 2010 entwined both. Surprised by the unusual sight of unaccompanied women in the countryside, Addario and the physician she was traveling with learned one of the women was pregnant, and in labor. Her husband previously had lost a wife to childbirth. His car had broken down, he was trying to locate another, and Addario and her companion drove the family to a hospital. This episode, recounted in a magazine compilation of Addario’s Afghanistan images, ended without grief. Aided by nurses, the 18-year-old mother delivered a baby girl.

Photograph by Lynsey Addario
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Sometimes our photographers do more than take images—they also help.

In Afghanistan on a story about maternal mortality, Lynsey Addario came across these two women on the road. Photographing them against a stark background, Addario was struck that they were out alone.

It turns out one was in labor.

“We offered to take them to the hospital, but they said they needed the husband's permission," Addario told my colleague David Beard. Addario and her guide went, got the husband's permission, returned, then drove the woman to a hospital, where the baby was delivered.

It was a happy counterpoint to a grim assignment. “So many women,” Addario said, “die in Afghanistan because they have no access” to medical attention.

The image, from 2015, was

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