Lynsey Addario joins Reportage by Getty Images

Award-winning photographer Lynsey Addario has joined Reportage by Getty Images.

A frequent contributor to TIME, Addario, 40, has covered conflicts in Iraq, Lebanon, Darfur and Congo, as well as Afghanistan, where she documented the April 2014 presidential elections for a TIME cover story.

“Lynsey is one of the most respected and accomplished photojournalists of her generation,” says Aidan Sullivan, Getty’s Vice President of Photo Assignments, in a prepared statement. “Her extraordinary thirst for knowledge, her ability to create compelling and visually stunning narratives, her passion, persistence and resilience are all part of what makes her the formidable journalist she is.”

Addario started her career as a freelancer for Associated Press in the late 1990s, photographing conflict and humanitarian issues. She first covered Afghanistan when she was just 26, and has since worked on most major 21st century conflicts. In 2004, while covering the Iraq war, she was abducted in a village outside of Falluja. Seven years later, Muammar Qaddafi loyalists in Libya detained her and colleagues Stephen Farrell, Tyler Hicks and Anthony Shadid for six days during which they were physically abused.

At Reportage by Getty Images, Addario joins a roster of photographers that include Tom Stoddart, Paula Bronstein and Benjamin Lowy among many others.

“The possibility to mobilize the international community to act on human suffering is what drives me every day as a photojournalist,” says Addario. “Reportage by Getty Images shows a passion and commitment to this profession, to enabling and promoting our job as communicators, so it is with excitement that I look forward to our collaboration.”

In recent months, she has written for TIME about her experience in Afghanistan. “The first time I visited Afghanistan in May 2000, the country was under Taliban rule. At the time, the Taliban had banned photography of any living being, so I snuck around with my cameras in a bag, visited people in their homes in Kabul and the provinces, and claimed I was photographing destroyed buildings left by over two decades of war in the country […] I met brave women who were teaching in secret schools for girls–education for girls over 10 was also banned under the Taliban–in basements and behind heavy curtains in their homes, and interviewed educated, professional Afghan women who were relegated to a life behind closed doors and without work.”

When she returned last April, she was struck by the violence that has taken hold of Kabul. “The Taliban–who ironically had been responsible for bringing stability to the country less than two decades before—was slaughtering civilians and security forces in the capital.” Yet, she remained hopeful, witnessing tens of thousands of Afghan men cheering for the first woman to run for vice-president. “For a moment, I knew the Afghan people had won. The Taliban could force them inside no longer.”

Aside from TIME, Addario’s work has appeared in the New York Times and National Geographic.

Lynsey Addario is a Reportage by Getty Images photographer based in London and a frequent contributor to TIME.

Olivier Laurent is the editor of TIME LightBox. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @olivierclaurent.