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.
‘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
‘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
‘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.
‘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
‘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.
‘That Day Shaped My Whole Year’
Protesters fighting with police over George Floyd’s murder killed the law enforcers brutally.
‘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.
