Addario, 35, who is based in Turkey, will receive a total of $500,000, $100,000 a year for the next five years, to pursue her work creatively and without restriction.
Addario's father, Phillip Addario, owns the Phillip Bruce Salon in Westport. Her mother, Camille, lives in Fairfield.
The MacArthur Fellowship is granted as a reward for work yet to come. The president of the MacArthur Foundation said the grants are "distinctive," because they are intended to urge the recipient to "continue your work in a creative way, without anyone looking over your shoulder."
Upon awarding the annual grants, Robert Gallucci, the president of the MacArthur Foundation, said to the recipients, "We're looking for you to continue in a creative way, without anyone looking over your shoulder."
In its profile of Addario, the MacArthur Foundation said: "Lynsey Addario is a photojournalist whose powerful images are visual testimony to the most pressing conflicts and humanitarian crises of the 21st century.
"In a time when many readers are becoming numb to the constant flow of images of war, death, and suffering, Addario combines a rigorous journalistic approach with a keen artistic eye to render events in Afghanistan, Darfur, Iraq, and elsewhere in startling and unexpected ways."
Addario's work in war-torn countries, including Darfur and Afghanistan, has appeared in The New York Times and National Geographic, where she is a regular contributor. Her work in Afghanistan was featured in a Sept. 7, 2008 New York Times Magazine cover story entitled "Talibanistan." She shared in a Pulitzer Prize in 2009 won by the New York Times for International Reporting.
The "genius awards" are open to American citizens and the winners must be nominated. There is no application process. Addario was one of 24 winners, among which were a mixed-media artist, a poet, writers, a bridge engineer, an infectious disease doctor, a journalist who focuses on cold-case murders, and a scientist.
Earlier in the year, Addario escaped significant injury in an automobile accident in Pakistan in which her driver was killed and another journalist seriously injured. They were returning to Islamabad from covering refugees in a camp at the time.
In 2000, Addario started photographing conflict and humanitarian issues. In addition to the Pulitzer, she won the Getty Images Grant for Editorial Photography in 2008 for her work in Darfur. In 2008 she was also named a Fellow at the Columbia College of Women in the Arts in Chicago.
Addario started shooting for the Buenos Aires Herald in Argentina in 1996 with, as she says, "no professional photographic training." She is a 1995 graduate of the University of Wisconsin and speaks Spanish and Italian.