The 10 Best Pictures Of 2020

Liane

Thanks to Umer Ishfaq for this first guest post of 2021! And TIME’s Top 10 Photos of 2020 post:

Over time, a year can seem like an idea. We divide it carefully into months and days, but by the moment we reach Dec, it’s hard to memorize what happened and when.

None of us can get to more than one place at a time. This is where photographs captured on cameras, body camera, mobiles, DSLRs, or even on security cameras become valuable, as a record of events and experiences we have shared as citizens of the world.

This is what a comprehensive photograph can do. Even when our own lives were unharmed by the horrifying Australian bushfires, a picture of a volunteer helping a koala in distress reinforces the duty we all have as agents of the Earth. Just one minute from a Black Lives Matter march in Brooklyn reminds us that the vigorous protests of 2020 aren’t only some events in the past; they represent an ongoing struggle. These and other moments, captured by photographers worldwide, are the heart of TIME’s top photographs of the year.

 ‘A Light in the Dark’

A man was captured gathering lanterns from inside one of the refrigerated semitrailers that held corpses’ overflow. Everybody bag represented so much pain and suffering, lives lost and families upended,” says Kohut, haunted that the warning went unheeded.

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK – APRIL 22, 2020: Patient escort, Kyle Edwards, collects the portable lanterns that light the inside of one of three refrigerated semi-trailers that have been repurposed to be an improvised morgue, parked outside of Wyckoff Heights Medical Center. Mr. Edwards is a lead transporter, in charge of managing nightly teams of patient escorts to transport the remains of deceased Covid-19 patients from the hospital morgue to the trailers. The trailers were brought to the hospital during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, to hold the overflow of the bodies of patients who died from the virus. The small morgue inside of the hospital only holds 9 bodies and fills up daily, sometimes multiple times. The semi-trailers can hold a little more than 50 body bags each. Hospital workers built simple, wooden shelves, three bunks high, numbered by hand with a sharpie marker and lined the inside of the trailers to hold the remains while they wait to be picked up by mortuary workers. Over 18,000 New Yorkers have died from the coronavirus, overwhelming funeral homes and cremation providers. The backlog means families must wait several days, and sometimes as long as two weeks to be able to lay their loved ones to rest. Mr. Edwards says his family is afraid he will become infected, because of his work, and have asked him to take time off until the virus is not so prevalent – but he continues to work, because he feels like he can’t let his team at the hospital down. He said he had to train his 5-year old child to not run up and hug him when he comes home from work every night. “My kid – says things like, ‘Daddy has to wash the coronavirus off him when he gets home from the hospital’ to people,” Mr. Edwards said, shaking his head at how unbelievable his life has become since the virus came to New York. PHOTO: Meridith Kohut for TIME Magazine

 

 ‘Their Sadness and Anger Were Real’

Iranian women mourn over Qasem Soleimani following his killing in Baghdad. The woman is raising her fist while holding the poster, the others in their thoughts. They were wandering around, along with their feelings.”

 

‘I Couldn’t Forget Her Face.’

A man carrying his nephew after a massive explosion at Beirut’s port on Aug. 4. many other men holding a pair of injured people to send them to the hospital

Hoda Kinno, 11, is evacuated by her uncle Mustafa on Aug. 4, 2020, shortly after a massive explosion at the port in Beirut, Lebanon. The Kinno family from Syria’s Aleppo region was devastated in the wake of the explosion — Hoda suffered a broken neck and other injuries and her sister Sedra, 15, died in the explosion. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

 

 ‘She Didn’t Want to Let Go’

A woman hugging her relatives from a drop cloth hanging on a clothesline would serve as a barrier. as she was suffering from covid and wanted to hug her family

WANTAGH, NEW YORK – MAY 24: Olivia Grant (R) hugs her grandmother, Mary Grace Sileo through a plastic drop cloth hung up on a homemade clothes line during Memorial Day Weekend on May 24, 2020 in Wantagh, New York. It is the first time they have had contact of any kind since the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic lockdown started in late February. (Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images)

‘It Felt Poignant to Me’

A girl mourned Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death on the Supreme Court’s marble porch while conventional supporters of Judge Amy Coney Barrett prayed at the doors. A thousand others marched in Washington, D.C.

Conservative women who support Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court, pray while touching the doors of the Supreme Court in Washington as Jacquelyn Booth lays on the ground mourning the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Saturday, Sept. 26, 2020. Barrett is a new kind of icon for some, one they have not seen before in American cultural and political life. (Erin Schaff/The New York Times)

 ‘Nobody Would Touch Him’

“Wuhan had indeed become a ghost town, where People used to step on streets for two or three reasons: for food, to go to a drugstore, or to visit a hospital.”

 ‘It’s Hard to Know What He Knew’

As Donald Trump stood very, very muted at White House after the elections, maintaining his sophisticated and mannered behaviour towards his supporters

President Trump gives a speech in the East Room on election night on the still undecided results of the 2020 election. Peter van AgtmaelÑMagnum Photos for TIME

 ‘It Left Without a Fight’

Water to feed it as it was exhausted and dehydrated as the woman approached with her offering and poured it on its head as it was finished and dehydrated after Australia’s bushfire, which killed or displaced more than 3 billion animals.

A koala found on Kangaroo Island, South Australia, Australia on Jan. 16, 2020. AustraliaÕs bushfire season killed or displaced more than 3 billion animals. At a melted playground on Kangaroo Island on Jan. 16, Adam Ferguson spotted a koala in the background. A fire-response volunteer noticed and rushed over with water. ÒUnder normal circumstances, the koala would have scrambled up a tree,Ó says Ferguson, Òbut it was exhausted and dehydrated.Ó Minutes later, it was hustled to a nearby shelter. ÒIt left without a fight,Ó says the photographer. Adam Ferguson for TIME

 ‘That Day Shaped My Whole Year’

Protesters fighting with police over George Floyd’s murder killed the law enforcers brutally.

George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis on a Monday. By Friday, America was different. Malike Sidibe, at 23, was moved to attend and photograph a protest for the first time in his life. In Brooklyn, on May 29, he saw protesters struggling with police over one of their own. Being there, Sidibe says, Òchanged the way I view the world and how I carry myself in this world.Ó Malike Sidibe for TIME

 ‘It Felt Like a Show of Force’

Two children are walking up the road, passing the fighters. It shows the painful reality in which children grow up.

Why photography matters?

This is a question that we all ask at one time or another. After all, why do we wake up rarely at 4:00 AM to snap the sunrise, when we could enjoy a warm and comfortable sleep in our bed?

Why do we spend long hours twitching our articles and learning about photography essentials when we could be watching television or hang out with our buddies?

And some days, when we have zero creativity at all and clicking the shutter button seems like the most challenging thing in the world, we continue to persist – but why? What is it about photogrammetry that’s so compelling?

 

What we retain and why we keep on going?

Here are some reasons why I think photography matters. Hopefully, these ideas will help you find accuracy and motivation and inspire you to capture images, even when it feels like everything is irrelevant. It will help if you put down the camera forever.

  • Our photographs tell us what is valuable to us.
  • Photographs are part of our legacy.
  • Photographs allow us to share and to interact.
  • Photography makes us artists.
  • Photography is a complex language.
  • Photography has the power to move us.

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