Today is April 8 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “What is the price you are willing to pay for creating your life?”
Catherine Leroy understood that to create the life she envisioned there was going to be a high price to pay as a war photojournalist.
Very few women went to Vietnam as journalists, and even fewer as dedicated war photojournalists. Leroy was brought up in a convent in Paris.
She was moved by images of war she had seen in the magazine Paris Match, and decided she wanted to travel to Vietnam to "give war a human face."
At the age of 21 she booked a one-way ticket to Laos in 1966 as a freelancer with no contracts, one Leica M2 camera, and $100 in her pocket.
On arrival in Saigon Leroy met the photographer Horst Faas, bureau chief of the Associated Press.
Leroy faced no shortage of sexism. After she parachuted into combat during Operation Junction City, in early 1967, rumors circulated that she had slept with a colonel in exchange for permission.
In fact, she had earned her parachutist license as a teenager, and had already jumped 84 times.
Still, she developed a reputation as a photographer quickly, selling photos to The Associated Press and U.P.I.
Leroy was widely considered the most daring photographer in Vietnam. Living with soldiers meant that she could eat rations and sleep in the countryside.
At one point during the Tet offensive, in early 1968, she was captured by the North Vietnamese Army. She explained she was a journalist and would do no harm, so the soldiers let her go. But first she persuaded them to let her take photos, saying that it was important because only one side of the story was being seen.
The photos ran as a cover story in Life magazine, which she wrote herself. After Vietnam she continued to serve as a photojournalist in war-torn countries and won numerous awards for her work.
American essayist Henry David Thoreau noted “The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”
To be one of the best war time photojournalists, Catherine Leroy paid the price of poverty, sexism, and being captured behind enemy lines.
As you go about your day consider asking yourself what is the price you are willing to pay for creating your life?