A Year Like No Other
Certain years are so eventful they are regarded as pivotal in history, years when wars and slavery ended and deep generational fissures burst into the open — 1865, 1945 and 1968 among them. The year 2020 will certainly join this list. It will long be remembered and studied as a time when more than 1.5 million people globally died during a pandemic, racial unrest gripped the world, and democracy itself faced extraordinary tests.
The photographs in this collection capture those historic 12 months. Jeffrey Henson Scales, who edited The Year in Pictures with David Furst, said he had never felt such sweep and emotion from a single year’s images — from the “joy and optimism” of a New Year’s Eve kiss in Times Square, to angry crowds on the streets of Hong Kong and in American cities, to scenes of painful debates over race and policing, to the “seemingly countless graves and coffins across the globe.”
The impeachment of an American president culminated in early 2020. But two pictures taken in late January in Wuhan, China, are hints of a larger cataclysm to come. In one aerial shot, construction workers are building a giant hospital virtually overnight to handle hundreds of patients stricken with the coronavirus. The other looks like a still from a sci-fi film: A man dressed in black, wearing a white mask, lies dead on a city street; two emergency workers have stepped away from him and gaze at the viewer — all but their eyes hidden by face coverings and ghostly white protective suits.
Then the virus swept the world, recorded in indelible images. The scenes of people comforting beloved family members through glass and cellphones are heartbreaking. Some of the most haunting images are of emptiness. Still cities. Vacant streets of London and the Place de la Concorde. A desolate Munich subway station. Among the most disturbing is a photo of a refrigerated trailer set up as a makeshift morgue in Greenwich Village.
Punctuating these scenes are photographs of a tumultuous American election that even without the ravages of the virus would end up looming large in history books. As the year progresses, fueled by police shootings of young Black men, powerfully symbolic pictures of protests begin appearing. In May, a lone demonstrator carries an upside-down American flag past a burning liquor store in Minneapolis, in protest of the killing of George Floyd.
In 2020, a year when all aspects of life seemed transformed, so was the process of making these photographs. Journalists are observers, not participants, but the most striking sense to emerge from interviews with the photographers who took these pictures — described by Mr. Henson Scales as the most diverse group in his more than a decade curating this annual compilation — was how much they too lived what they witnessed. No one could escape the virus and vitalness of 2020. It gave photographers fresh perspective. And they gave us unforgettable images from a historic year in our lives.
“Everyone was so hopeful and excited making proclamations that 2020 was going to be their year. It just seems like a horrible joke now. It seemed like we were ringing in a very special year, and we were, but wow.”
— Calla Kessler
Hong Kong, Jan. 1
After weeks of relative calm, pro-democracy protesters took to the streets, resuming mass demonstrations that had begun the previous June.
Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times
Des Moines, Jan. 5
Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. prayed at the Corinthian Baptist Church during his presidential campaign, in which he promised to restore the “soul of America.”
Brittainy Newman/The New York TimesThis trip to Iowa was Brittainy Newman’s first time on the campaign trail, and this image came from one of her last opportunities to photograph anyone in such close quarters this year.
“They were praying for him on his journey, on this trail he’s going on, and for him to become president and wishing the world would get someone new,” she said. “Everyone was trying desperately to believe. Even Biden’s face — he’s staring right at Clara Jones. He was just staring at her, and her hands — they never let go. They just kept saying ‘Amen, amen.’ You could feel it. It was like a crescendo building up. Everyone at the end had goosebumps.”
Saudi Arabia, Jan. 6
The Dakar Rally, an annual off-road endurance event that has been held in dozens of countries, was hosted in 2020 by the largest country on the Arabian Peninsula.
Bernat Armangue/Associated Press
Caracas, Venezuela, Jan. 7
Supporters of Nicolás Maduro tried blocking the re-election of Juan Guaidó as leader of the National Assembly. Since 2019, both men have claimed to be Venezuela’s rightful president.
Adriana Loureiro Fernandez for The New York Times
New York, Jan. 8
Fidaa Zaidan performing in “Grey Rock,” a play about a Palestinian man who decides to build a rocket to the moon.
Caitlin Ochs for The New York Times
Bago State Forest, Australia, Jan. 10
A dehydrated and underfed wild horse was on the verge of collapse as Australia battled one of the worst wildfire seasons in its history.
Matthew Abbott for The New York Times
“Once a fire goes through, things are just so quiet. You don’t realize all the bugs, all the birds, all the little beings make these noises. It’s just so disconcerting to be walking through this destroyed forest and have complete silence.”
— Matthew Abbott
Milwaukee, Jan. 14
President Trump at a “Keep America Great” rally, two days before the official start of his impeachment trial for charges of obstruction of Congress and abuse of power.
Doug Mills/The New York Times
Kansas City, Mo., Jan. 19
Eric Fisher of the Kansas City Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium. The Chiefs’ 35-24 victory over the Tennessee Titans in the A.F.C. championship game sent the Chiefs to Super Bowl LIV, which they went on to win.
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
Benghazi, Libya, Jan. 23
After years of conflict, Libyan factions edged briefly toward a cease-fire, but this street in Benghazi best told the story of life in the exhausted country.
Ivor Prickett for The New York TimesIvor Prickett traveled to Benghazi in Libya, from where he had reported years earlier, after being granted the rare permission to photograph the eastern part of the country.
“It was basically unrecognizable,” Mr. Prickett said after his chance to get a look at a part of the nation that had been largely cut off to foreigners for years. “I couldn’t really figure out what was where. It did come back to me, but it was one of the most heavily destroyed scenes I’ve seen in years, and that’s saying a lot because I’ve been in Mosul and Raqqa.”
Officials in Benghazi kept steering Mr. Prickett away from the old, colonial part of the city. He found a way to sneak in with the help of friends, and eventually persuaded officials to let him work there.
“At night it was particularly poignant, because there was no electricity and would just be lit by lights of cars,” he said. “There were people living amongst the ruins. It was really evocative and spooky. And I was walking around and saw one of the most heavily destroyed streets and saw this one light probably as far as the eye could see across three or four blocks on the second or third floor of an apartment block. It looked so out of place in this completely gutted building.
“I was waiting for a car to come down the street to light the buildings with a slow exposure, then just by chance this cat walked across in front of the car, and that was the picture. I had the car and the cat, and I knew I had the picture and just packed up and went home.”
St. Petersburg, Russia, Jan. 15
During President Vladimir V. Putin’s state of the nation speech, displayed on a facade, he called for constitutional changes that would allow him to hold power past 2024.
Anton Vaganov/Reuters
Los Angeles, Jan. 22
New citizens were sworn in at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
Todd Heisler/The New York Times
Caracas, Venezuela, Jan. 30
Milagros Vásquez, seated, was turned away by five hospitals as she went into labor. Venezuela’s public health system has been shattered by a broken economy, with maternity wards the most damaged.
Meridith Kohut for The New York TimesMeridith Kohut wanted to show how the economic collapse in Venezuela was devastating the country’s health care system by illustrating the plight of pregnant women.
Ms. Kohut and Julie Turkewitz, the Andes bureau chief for The New York Times, followed one woman in labor who was turned away from several hospitals before planting herself in front of one and refusing to leave.
“She had been in labor for 40 hours,” Ms. Kohut said. “She just said, ‘I’m not going to go try anywhere else.’ She eventually fainted and a bunch of other pregnant women who had just started labor were there and they and their families all started banging on the door.
“We were afraid she was going to die. I took a photo of her when she fainted, and her mom was screaming and pleading for help. Then everyone in the Times team dropped our cameras and everything and we all started banging on the door, too, and then they finally let her inside. And unfortunately, her baby died the next morning.
“The crisis is so bad that to do a funeral is like the equivalent of a year’s worth of minimum-wage salary. So she couldn’t afford to bury the baby and had to leave the body in the morgue. It was absolutely heartbreaking.”
Wuhan, China, Jan. 24
Construction teams worked around the clock on a field hospital that was mostly built in 10 days to help cope with the outbreak of the novel coronavirus.
Getty Images
Wuhan, China, Jan. 30
A month into the coronavirus outbreak, workers in hazmat suits attended to an elderly man who collapsed near a hospital.
Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHector Retamal remembers taking the train from Shanghai to Wuhan, China, in January, as the city was locking down.
A woman approached him and asked where he was going.“‘It’s no good. It’s dangerous. Don’t go to Wuhan,’” he recalled her saying. “People were really afraid of the virus.”
Mr. Retamal arrived to find a deserted train station and a ghost town of a city of some 11 million people.
He and a videographer spent about 10 days there. The two men often had to walk, lugging their gear across the sprawling city and trying to keep a low profile from the police, who would shoo them back to their hotels.
Coming across a man’s body on the ground not far from one hospital was startling, Mr. Retamal said. The scene unfolded in utter chaos and confusion.
“My question was what was he doing there,” Mr. Retamal said. “He didn’t move and, wow, is he dead? I was starting to take photos because it was strange and at that exact moment a woman started to scream, saying ‘No, no, no,’ and she asked us to leave the place, and she was angry.”
More people arrived, surrounding Mr. Retamal and telling him not to take photos.
Everyone kept their distance from the man until people in white protective suits and masks arrived and placed him in a yellow body bag. They sprayed disinfectant around the area where he had lain.
The police began to arrive, and Mr. Retamal hurried away. He and his colleagues never officially confirmed that the man had died of Covid-19; nobody would answer their questions.
