The Year in Pictures
A Weary World
This past year saw plenty of suffering before the morning of Oct. 7.
The war in Ukraine continued to rage. A wildfire tore through a historic town in Hawaii, and the earth shook violently in Turkey. Mass shootings took life after life.
Then, on Oct. 7, Hamas gunmen stormed across the border of Gaza into Israel. And Israel struck back with force across Gaza. The suffering across the world seemed as if it would never end.
Every year, our photo editors try to capture the best photojournalism in one intense presentation. The Year in Pictures is a way to commemorate the big news events from January to December: the ones that traumatized us — and there are many of those — mixed in with some moments of bliss.
January
“I was keeping my eye on both Matt Gaetz and Kevin McCarthy, should there be any interactions between them. And sure enough, after a round of votes, the two met up. I couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but the body gestures looked confrontational. It definitely was a moment of foreshadowing.” —Haiyun Jiang
“The missile hit on a Saturday afternoon. Children were playing in the park in the courtyard, people had been out shopping and were returning home. Over the next few days, volunteers set up camp to assist emergency services in that same courtyard, the playground now filled with aid and the recovered belongings of families who survived.” —Nicole Tung
“I was looking at her from the right-hand side and I was trying to photograph her eyes and the injuries, and it wasn’t coming together. Suddenly she turned and the other side of her face was a patchwork. It just spoke to me, and symbolized all of these lives and faces, and everything that has been torn in the country.” —Lynsey Addario
“Pricilla and Diana shared a close friendship, and had danced together at the center earlier on the day of the shooting. When Pricilla learned of the tragedy, her heart was shattered. The scene captured is deeply poignant. As nostalgic music began playing, the elder dancers, for the first time since the tragedy, resumed dancing. This moment reflected their resilience.” —Li Qiang
“This was during a break in the storm. There was an eerie sense, but also a peaceful sense and a powerful sense. I kept thinking about how small and fragile we are as humans. Some of the old-growth redwoods are 1,000 years old. These trees have lived through so much.” —Alexandra Hootnick
February
“When I saw he was giving a speech behind bulletproof glass my adrenaline went down, because it’s hard to shoot through glass. I finally found this one spot on the side. Then I realized I could go up an inch and get the double reflection. We always talk about Washington being a game of inches for photographers.” —Doug Mills
“I stood in a snow-covered field as the brigade prepared for battle. The air was thick with anticipation. This photograph, taken by a remote camera on board, captures a poignant moment at the heart of the conflict, encapsulating the unwavering courage and determination of these soldiers. Despite a year of relentless warfare, these helicopters, though technologically aged, remain a steadfast force.” —Daniel Berehulak
“This was kind of the moment where we were seeing the pinnacle of what battle rapping can get you to. People would react to a barb or insult that really hit and the whole place would go wild, but if an insult didn’t land people would boo and laugh. And each of the rappers would feed off that energy.” —Christopher Lee
“I was shocked by the scale of the destruction. There were many people looking for their loved ones in the destroyed buildings. I saw that a group of rescuers were working on this collapsed building. After about an hour, they found a child under the rubble. She was alive and the rescuers were shouting, they were so happy and relieved.” —Emin Ozmen
“This scene is in Turkey but it’s a Syrian family. There was anger at the Syrian diaspora — people were saying not to give away tents to them but to save them for Turkish families. The blanket laid beneath this olive tree is where the women had been praying. It was a point of peace and reflection.” —Emily Garthwaite
March
“I didn’t look at the photographs at first. It wasn’t until I was filing that I saw this. I gasped and had to take a minute. It was hard for me to look at. I was covering the aftermath of the shooting while this image was already in my head. And it stayed there, and she’s been in my head since.” —Nicole Hester
“Taras and his mother were in the basement of their home where they had sheltered from an air raid earlier that morning. It was sad to see how a year into the war, it was always present, both during the daytime in the form of air raid alarms, but also in their dreams at night.” —Emile Ducke
“I had seen this house multiple times while I was photographing around town. It was as though it had been directly cut in half. Cody was the friend of the person who owned it. In this photo he was taking a smoke break in what used to be a living room, or maybe it was a bedroom. It was surreal.” —Brad J. Vest
“I spent time with communities of young people, talking to them about their hopes, as well as the challenges for their future. I wanted to understand how they saw themselves. Among the most exciting things for me was portraying the sea change that they are bringing about. This is a population that is changing the world.” —Hannah Reyes Morales
April
“I’ve been fond of coming-of-age gatherings, especially within Black spaces. A majority of the girls have had a mother or older sister do this, or some connection to it. It’s a passing down of ritual. The event goes on all night. At the end, everyone was racing to get out of their dresses and have fun with their friends.” —Miranda Barnes
“Striker was the goofiest dog. His tongue was constantly out of his mouth. I was trying so hard to get him to sit and not have his tongue sticking out, and it was just impossible. Finally, I decided I was just going to lean into this. This tongue is the main focus of his entire being.” —May Truong
“By the time I made this image, I had been working with the community there for nearly two years. I had heard that Bangladeshis from all over New York City come to the intersection for Eid prayer. The tradition had grown so large that they now had to shut down McDonald Avenue to accommodate the crowds.” —Jonah Markowitz
“Caitlyne did what she would have done with Jackie if she were alive, scrolling through TikToks and dancing. I was struck by how normal this seemed for her. As she danced, I couldn’t help but see a child trying to hang on to her innocence. I saw a kid trying to be a kid against the brutal backdrop of American reality.” —Tamir Kalifa
May
“I was taking photos from across the Rio Grande at ground level. We had been out there for about three hours. I said what photographers often say: ‘One more photo.’ This one frame was so different — dark, ugly yellow lights and dusty.” —Ivan Pierre Aguirre
“Families visited Lenin’s Mausoleum, and passed by the graves of Soviet leaders. Children and adults streamed past in droves, but everyone stopped to take photos only in front of Stalin’s grave. One child asked: ‘Why are there so many flowers on Stalin’s grave and not on the others?’ To which a boy replied: ‘Because Stalin was the greatest.’” —Nanna Heitmann
“Despite having seen military photographs of the devastation of Bakhmut, to actually be in control of a drone and fly up to the edge of the city and see it, live, really solidified in my mind how much the city had been destroyed and how many lives had been lost in the process. It was personally quite shocking.” —Tyler Hicks
“Shawn said she had trouble sleeping since her son was arrested and what really soothed her was having her mom rub her arm until she fell asleep. We as photographers come in during some of the worst moments of people’s lives and ask them to share it with us. It’s a gift and I do not take it for granted.” —Erin Schaff
June
“This was a quiet moment for these soldiers who had been through hell, surrounded by destruction. What you can’t see is how loud it was outside, with shrieking low-flying aircraft and outgoing fire. It was interesting — the contrast with this restful moment of having liberated the nearby town and having survived, and sitting in what’s left of this staging area.” —David Guttenfelder
“The girls were getting their faces painted as part of the International Children’s Day event the hospital staff organized. Kyiv had endured days of Russian attacks on the city. The staff hoped to put smiles on their current and former patients’ faces by organizing music, games and mascots to come in to entertain the children.” —Nicole Tung
“I wanted to show how serious the heat in Texas is and how it’s really affecting people — that it’s more than just kids on a summer day in the water, trying to stay cool. That ends up looking fun. The woman had been vomiting and had a fever. I hadn’t ever seen someone suffering from that before. It was really concerning.” —Kaylee Greenlee Beal
“This was a dream assignment for me as a Deadhead. What’s really cool about this scene is it’s timeless. You look at this photo and you’re like, Dude, what time period is this? You lose yourself in the music and you have these little moments in these big chaotic spaces where you feel like the band is playing to you.” —Peter Fisher
July
“These were locally elected royalty — teens from the town. I loved the dynamic between the classic Americana float presentation and their U.F.O. costuming. It was this really understated sense of humor in the moment. You almost miss it if you’re not paying attention.” —Erinn Springer
“This was taken at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. They are not uncomfortable working at that time of day; it’s really not that hot at that hour. It’s just a matter of the scheduling problems. People’s lives are turned upside down so they can work.” —Paul Ratje
“From the runway, you could see where the sun was falling. Thank God everyone got there on time so we didn’t miss the light. The whole time I was shooting the show I was entranced by the setting and these beautiful pieces coming down the runway, and was thinking to myself just how phenomenal the whole experience was.” —Simbarashe Cha
“I saw what I originally thought was just a uniform that had been discarded on the road, but on closer inspection I realized it was a body. There had been no effort made to move the body. He’d been run over so many times that he became impacted to the point that the body had become part of the road.” —Tyler Hicks
August
“What we saw was massive. Like, biblical. You never expect that amount of people fleeing a country, risking their lives, going into a jungle. They don’t even know they’re going to come out of there alive. Each one of them is carrying the engine of hope of making it to the United States and the chance of a new life.” —Federico Rios
“People were excited. They were dressed up, and it felt optimistic. In doing stories on migration we usually catch people in the middle of their journey or right when they get off the bus, and they’re tired and probably scared and have been through a lot. So it was nice to catch people at a different point in their journey.” —Todd Heisler
“I was in a helicopter, and I was struck by the one surviving home amid the devastation. It had a metal roof. I know from covering other wildfire aftermaths that metal roofs make such a difference. Embers just slide right off them. Fifteen years ago, fires were all deep in the woods or mountains, but increasingly they are in communities.” —Max Whittaker
“I was at the Shade Hotel in Manhattan Beach, which was doing Taylor Swift events. I met Gabbi there; I was just drawn to her. She had on a really cute outfit. I asked her what she’d feel like when she saw Taylor for the first time, and her face just lit up with this big smile.” —Maggie Shannon
“One of Michael’s colleagues had called and said ‘I’m about to give someone Narcan.’ Michael sped through downtown to get to the scene, and when he saw that the guy was not breathing, he ran and got a one-way breathing valve from his car. They are reversing overdoses multiple times a day. This man did end up coming to, thankfully.” —Erin Schaff
“They were walking through the Mobil station and were kind of protesting and vogueing at the same time. I felt the conflict — I didn’t know if this should be fun or this should be sad. But they thought this was a way to show respect.” —Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet
September
“Families were digging for bodies. The first day the sun was going down and we had to leave, and they didn’t manage to retrieve any. We came back the second day and there was a guy who was quite old but still helping the family dig through the rubble. Here he was resting at the gate of his own home.” —Sergey Ponomarev
“This image came from what is known as a ‘photo spray.’ About two dozen photographers get herded to the foot of the stage as the candidates enter from the wings. As they smile awkwardly and wave, the photographers, a tumbling ball of chaos, jostle for position to photograph a group of politicians towering above them, doing not much of anything.” —Damon Winter
“When we approached the team of soldiers, they were hiding in the bushes. We heard Russian drones flying overhead, and it was terrifying. Most of the war at this point is fought by drone. There’s nothing you can do, just hope you are hidden well enough. The soldier released the drone and we ran back into the bushes.” —Lynsey Addario
“After a long, bloody conflict, the people left everything behind and traveled wherever they could find space, crammed into various means of transport. The boy in the picture is hiding from the rain with his family in an open dump truck in which they traveled for more than 24 hours.” —Nanna Heitmann
October
“I had barely engaged Evgenia in conversation when another rocket siren sounded. She yelled for me to follow her, and I lifted my camera to my eye as we sprinted to her home. Rocket sirens are relatively common in Ashkelon during cycles of violence between Israelis and Palestinians, but we could all feel that this time it was profoundly different.” —Tamir Kalifa
“This was the first day journalists were allowed to enter kibbutzim that were destroyed. We came to this basketball playground where bodies were lined up and were waiting to be loaded into a truck, but the truck was already full. They didn’t want to stack bodies on top of bodies, so they were waiting for other trucks to come.” —Sergey Ponomarev
“I took this on the first day of the war, when people were already seeking shelter at U.N.-run schools like this one. The sound of the airstrike was really loud nearby, and we could see the plane overhead. The kids were really scared. I was scared, too. In war, the schools become shelters in Gaza, not places of education.” —Samar Abu Elouf
“This woman was going from body to body, searching for her killed siblings. When she found her pregnant sister, she started talking to her and saying, ‘You were scared of giving birth and now you are rested before you had to go through it.’ She was talking to her dead brothers and saying their names and their positive attributes.” —Samar Abu Elouf
“The family had spent little time alone that first week as friends and relatives held a near-constant vigil to support them as the days went by. The family, like so many others across Israel, were trapped in the agony of the unknown, waiting in limbo for any information on the whereabouts or the condition of their children.” —Tamir Kalifa
“I went with my son to a military base where my sister is serving, to bring her clothes and food. As we approached the base, we heard the alarm. While trying to protect my son, I noticed this father desperately shielding his children. He had five, so he had to choose only one. Within seconds, loud explosions began.” —Dor Kedmi
“Khaled was crying and asking, ‘Where is my mom?’ The scene was heartbreaking. I was also crying while I took the photos. I couldn’t help it — it was one of the most difficult moments I have photographed in this war. It really hit me as a mother. I wanted to embrace him and make it easier for him, but I couldn’t.” —Samar Abu Elouf
“That day I photographed many wounded children. Many were alone, like this girl, and not quite understanding what had happened yet. When they come in after they have been dug out from the rubble or wounded in the strikes, they are drowsy and confused. You can see ash on their clothes and bodies, and you can smell burned skin.” —Samar Abu Elouf
“This photo made me torn between two choices: to stop taking such pictures so I would not be more affected, or to continue to tell the truth. Death and grief knocked on the door of almost every house in Gaza. I’ve covered a lot of conflicts around the world, but this has been the worst one I have ever seen.” —Mohammed Salem
“In these portraits, I wanted to use the natural light of whichever location we were at. Stav looked as if he was in shock. I was trying to figure out how I could ask about how he was feeling without taking him back to the attack, but when I looked into his face I felt as if I knew the story.” —Avishag Shaar-Yashuv
“I was selected as part of a small pool of photographers. As I was setting my stuff down, I turned and I was face to face with Donald Trump. It was the closest I’d ever been to him. The courtroom was in complete silence. I saw the intensity of his expression, his anger and frustration rolling off in waves.” —Maansi Srivastava
“It was a crazy, surreal rush of all different kinds of emotions seeing this statue that brought so much pain and so many feelings and, I dare say, trauma to the city. It was so powerful to see the workers use plasma torches to cut off the face. It was a big and fitting end to this story.” —Eze Amos
November
“Seeing this lake appear in one of the driest and hottest places on Earth said a lot to me. When I got to the scene, it just blew my mind. There were no trees, barely any plant life. It was magical and profound. To me, there was beauty, and a realization of the extremes that climate change produces.” —Mette Lampcov
“The doctors put wool blankets under and on top of the babies to keep them warm and prepare them for transport. This one baby kept his eyes open and was looking around, maybe wondering what was going on. I was glad the babies were sent abroad for treatment, rather than facing the possibility of dying if they stayed in Gaza.” —Samar Abu Elouf
December
“On our way to Khan Younis, we saw a house that had just been hit. I asked the driver to stop the car and ran in my slippers to the scene. I started taking pictures but realized that the memory card was full. Then I remembered that I had a spare one in my pocket, and I took this photo.” —Yousef Masoud
- Curation
Tanner Curtis, Jeffrey Henson Scales
- Interviews
Dionne Searcey
- Digital Design
Sean Catangui, Matt Ruby
- Print Design
Mary Jane Callister, Felicia Vasquez
- Production
Peter Blair, Eric Dyer, Natasha King, Wendy Lu, Jessica Schnall, Hannah Wulkan
- Additional Production
Justin Baek
- New York Times Director of Photography
Meaghan Looram