역사를 정의하는이 순간이 2020 년을 형성했습니다.

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역사

역사를 정의하는이 순간이 2020 년을 형성했습니다.

내셔널 지오그래픽 사진가들은 재난, 불안, 불확실성이 지배하는 1 년을 포착합니다.

으로 게일 플레처

게시 (17)에게 년 12 월 2020 그리니치 표준시 21시 53분을

에 의해 사진 SAKKE OVERLUND 사진 모자이크

벨기에의 COVID-19 발병 전성기에 찍은 Cédric Gerbehaye의 흑백 사진은 병원 외부에 버려진 의료 가운과 안면 보호대를 보여줍니다. 보호용 가운 (의사가 환자를 구급차에서 응급실로 이송하기 직전에 창고로 옮겼 음)은 마치 그 안에있는 사람이 단순히 사라진 것처럼 의사의 모습을 그대로 담고 있습니다.

An image of quiet courage amid crisis, it’s one of 47 photographs selected by National Geographic to represent a year dominated by disaster, unrest, and uncertainty.

Wildfires and cyclonic storms ravaged homes and communities across the world. In Beirut, Lebanon, government mismanagement led to an ammonium nitrate explosion at the capital city’s port that killed nearly 200 people, wounded 6,500, and left 300,000 homeless.

Millions of people rose up against police brutality and systemic racism in the U.S. after several police killings of Black people, including George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Monuments fell and historical wounds reemerged.

Photographer Kris Graves drove over 3,500 miles in 23 days to photograph more than 250 memorials, monuments, and schools—90 percent of which were dedicated to the Confederacy. In Oklahoma, Bethany Mollenkof documented the unearthing of mass graves in the search for victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. “The moment felt surreal,” she says. “For so long Black people in Tulsa have demanded the city look for bodies in that spot in the graveyard, so to know they found human remains there felt heavy. I felt responsible to show the emotion.”

Unrest convulsed the rest of the world as well. Long-simmering ethnic tensions between Armenian and Azerbaijani groups in Nagorno-Karabakh erupted into a 44-day conflict that ended with a tenuous ceasefire. China cracked down on Hong Kong’s student-led protests by imposing a new security law criminalizing dissent, effectively dismantling the city’s political and cultural identity. “What does it mean for a city to die?” asks photographer Laurel Chor, a Hong Kong native who has documented the city’s upheaval. “How do you mourn the loss of a place in which you are still living?”

There were also major milestones. For the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, Hiroki Kobayashi documented how Japan remembers the trauma of the atomic bombs, while Robert Clark photographed veterans and survivors in the U.S., Japan, and Europe. In August, Americans celebrated the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the constitutional right to vote.

And in November, eight of our photographers covered a presidential election whose stakes felt more urgent than ever. A record number of Americans turned out to vote for the future of a nation at a crossroads.

이 모든 과정을 통해 코로나 바이러스는 우리가 축하 하는 방식 부터 슬픔에 찬 방식 까지 전 세계 모든 삶의 모든면에 영향을 미쳤습니다 . 140 만 명이 넘는 사람들이 사망했습니다. 수백만 명이 일자리를 잃고 가족을 부양 하기 위해 고군분투하고 있습니다. 그러나 첫 번째 백신 접종 은 몇 주 내에 출시 될 예정이며 새해에 대한 희망을 제공합니다.

내셔널 지오그래픽 사진 작가의 렌즈를 통해 볼 수있는 역사에 새겨질 순간입니다.

갤러리보기

갤러리 닫기CLOSE GALLERY

의사의 개인 보호 장비 (PPE)가 벨기에 라 루비 에르에있는 병원 외부 바닥에 흩어져 있습니다. 의사는 구급차에서 응급실에 들어갈 때 오염을 피하기 위해 PPE를 벗겨 냈습니다.

(From : 바이러스가 퍼진 세상 )

CÉDRIC GERBEHAYE의 사진

코로나 바이러스 전염병은 사람들이 의식을 수행하는 방식에 적응하도록 밀어 붙였습니다. 러시아 트 베리에서는 가면을 쓴 숭배자들이 교회에 모여 러시아에서 중요한 종교적 휴일 인 수정 된 정교회 부활절을 기념합니다.

(출처 : 러시아의 대유행과의 전쟁 속의 초현실적 인 장면 )

NANNA HEITMANN의 사진

COVID-19에 대한 조기 경고가 노인의 위험을 강조했지만 바이러스는 젊은이들에게도 위험 할 수 있습니다. 의료진은 모스크바 52 호 병원 COVID-19 병동에서 폐 질환으로 고통받는 청년에게 삽관을 준비하고있다.

NANNA HEITMANN의 사진

로마의 Spallanzani 병원의 간호사가 COVID-19 환자를 방문한 후 보호 복을 벗고 있습니다.

사진 : MASSIMO BERRUTI, 내셔널 지오그래픽 이탈리아

4 월 우 후루 케냐 타 대통령이 케냐에서 새벽부터 황혼까지 통금을 명령 한 후, 나이로비의 키티 스루 지역에있는 고속도로를 포함하여 케냐의 고속도로가 대부분 황량 해졌습니다.

(발신 : 나이로비에서 검역은 소수가 감당할 수있는 사치입니다. )

NICHOLE SOBECKI의 사진

인도네시아는 아시아에서 가장 높은 COVID-19 사망률 중 하나였습니다. 동부 자카르타의 폰독 랑곤 공립 묘지 (Pondok Ranggon Public Cemetery)는 4 월 말에 사진을 찍어 바이러스 희생자의 유입을 수용하기 위해 땅을 개간했습니다.

MUHAMMAD FADLI의 사진

벨기에 라 루비 에르의 한 요양원에서 간호사가 환자를 제지하고 안정시켜 동료가 COVID-19 검사를 수행 할 수 있도록합니다. 요양원은 특히 전염병의 영향을 받았습니다.

CÉDRIC GERBEHAYE의 사진

사랑하는 사람들은 영국 런던의 퀸 엘리자베스 병원에서 의료 서비스 제공자로 일하다 COVID-19에 걸린 후 사망 한 에스더이야 보데 아킨 샤냐의 죽음을 애도합니다.

(발신 : 영국에서 죽은 가족들은 아직도 COVID-19일까요? )

LYNSEY ADDARIO의 사진

암만에서 폐쇄되는 동안 젊은 요르단 인이 옥상에서 연을 날립니다. 도시의 기업들은 군중에서 떨어져 안전하게 할 수있는 여가 활동을 장려하기 위해 연을 배포했습니다.

MOISES SAMAN의 사진

캘리포니아는 올해 사상 최악의 화재 시즌을 겪었습니다. 이곳에서 소방관이 9 월 초에 시작된 크릭 화재로 불에 타 버린 시에라 국유림을 걷고 있습니다. 주 역사상 가장 큰 단일 산불로 거의 380,000 에이커를 태 웠습니다 . 소방관들은 연말까지이를 봉쇄하기를 희망합니다.

( 출처 : Witness California의 기록이 일선 소방관의 눈을 통해 빛납니다)

STUART PALLEY의 사진

지난 5 월 인도 동부와 방글라데시에서 엄청난 초 저기압 폭풍이 발생하여 수십 명이 사망하고 수천 명이 집을 잃었습니다. 인도에서 Sudhangshu Bera와 그의 가족은 집이 침수 된 후 근처 학교에 소지품을 가지고갑니다. 사이클론 암판은 21 세기에 벵골 만에서 가장 강한 폭풍으로보고되었습니다.

RONNY SEN의 사진

기록상 미국을 강타한 가장 강력한 허리케인 중 하나 인 허리케인 로라는 루이지애나 주 그랜드 체니 어에있는 성 유진 가톨릭 교회 전체에 습지 지팡이와 진흙을 남겼습니다.

(From : 얼마나 강력한 허리케인이 루이지애나 습지의 사라짐을 가속화했는지 )

KATHY ANDERSON의 사진

수도의 항구에서 질산 암모늄이 들어있는 창고가 폭발 한 후 보행자들이 레바논 베이루트의 마르 미카엘 지역에있는 부서진 건물을지나갑니다. 유네스코 보고서에 따르면이 폭발의 영향을받은 유산 상태의 역사적 건물이 최소 600 개에 이릅니다.

(출처 : 모든 레바논 세대가 폭력적인 혼돈과 그 여파를 견뎌야하는 이유는 무엇입니까? )

RENA EFFENDI의 사진

중국이 홍콩에서 이의를 제기하는 국가 안보 법을 통과시킨 다음날, 경찰은 홍콩의 연례 민주화 행진을 취소했습니다. 여기에서 노란색 조끼를 입은 기자들은 시위대와 구경꾼을 겨냥한 경찰 물대포를 피하기 위해 몸을 숙입니다.

(발신 : 홍콩은 중국이 반대를 단속하면서 삶의 방식의 끝을 애도한다 )

LAUREL CHOR의 사진

지난 7 월, 홍콩의 한 여성은 중국의 인도 법안에 항의하며 2019 년 사망 한 마커스 렁의 임시 기념관에서 경의를 표합니다.

LAUREL CHOR의 사진

스테파 나케 르트에있는 공화당 의료 센터의 의료 전문가들은 아르메니아와 아제르바이잔 간의 나고 르노-카라 바흐 분쟁에서 아르메니아 측에서 싸우는 부상당한 전투원을 찾는 경향이 있습니다.

( Nagorno-Karabakh 분쟁의 역사에 대해 자세히 알아보기 )

사진 : ANASTASIA TAYLOR-LIND, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY COVID-19 EMERGENCY FUND

제 2 차 세계 대전에서 독일의 항복을 기념하기 위해 군용기가 승리의 날 모스크바 붉은 광장을 날아갑니다. 전염병 및 재택 명령으로 인해 기념식에 잘 참석하지 못했습니다.

NANNA HEITMANN의 사진

로렌 스토커와 그녀의 딸들은 9 월 루스 베이더 긴스 버그의 주 장례식이 끝난 다음날 워싱턴 DC에있는 국립 초상화 갤러리에서 4 명의 여성 대법원 판사의 초상화 앞에서 멈 춥니 다.

(출처 : 미국의 수도에서 미국인들이 Ruth Bader Ginsburg를 애도하는 방법보기 )

MADDIE MCGARVEY의 사진

올해 Matilda McCrear는 마지막으로 알려진 노예선의 마지막 생존자로 확인되었습니다. 그녀는 1860 년 2 살 때 클로 틸다 호를 타고 미국으로 건너 왔으며 앨라배마 주 새 포드 근처의 마틴 역 묘지에있는 표시가없는 무덤에 묻힌 것으로 추정된다.

(From : 마지막 노예선 생존자와 그녀의 후손 확인 )

ELIAS WILLIAMS의 사진

Black Lives Matters 시위대는 브루클린 다리 위를 행진 할 준비를하고있는 뉴욕시의 Barclays Center 밖에 모입니다.

(발신 : 체계적인 인종 차별과 코로나 바이러스가 유색 인종을 죽이고 있습니다. 시위만으로는 충분하지 않습니다 )

RUDDY ROYE의 사진

시위자들은 뉴욕 브루클린에서 열린 Black Lives Matter Protest에서 경찰의 폭력에 반대합니다.

RUDDY ROYE의 사진

워싱턴의 서약 행진 전날 밤, 켄터키 주 루이빌에서 경찰에 의해 총에 맞아 사망 한 26 세의 브레오나 테일러를 묘사 한 벽화 앞에 보행자가 멈 춥니 다. 그녀의 죽음은 미국 전역에서 분노를 불러 일으켰습니다.

JOSHUA RASHAAD MCFADDEN의 사진

Tuskegee Confederate Monument는 연합의 United Daughters에 의해 1906 년에 세워졌습니다. 6 월에 기념비가 파손 된 후, 기념비를 완전히 제거 할 방법을 모색중인 Tuskegee 시가 파란색 방수포로 덮었습니다.

KRIS GRAVES의 사진

로버트 터너 목사는 1921 년 털사 인종 학살 희생자를 수색하는 과학자들이 대규모 무덤을 발견 한 오클라호마 오크 론 묘지의 발굴 현장 앞에서기도하고 있습니다. 시체는 아직 확인되지 않았습니다.

( 출처 : 털사 인종 학살 희생자 수색이 계속되면서 발굴 된 관 )

BETHANY MOLLENKOF의 사진

소유주 Chris Williams가 운영하는 비영리 팝업 주방 Lucille 's 1913의 직원은 텍사스 휴스턴에서 도움이 필요한 지역 사회를 위해 무료 식사를 준비합니다. Feeding America에 따르면 미국인 6 명 중 1 명은 전염병으로 인해 2020 년에 굶주릴 수 있습니다.

GRAHAM DICKIE의 사진

Karla González와 그녀의 어머니 Mirelis Toro는 쿠바 하바나의 한 시장에서 Karla의 성인식 재료를 구입하기 위해 줄을 서서 기다립니다. 관광의 감소와 해외 송금의 감소로 국가 경제가 심각한 피해를 입어 엄청난 식량 부족이 발생했습니다.

ELIANA APONTE의 사진

뉴욕 퀸즈에서는 커뮤니티 냉장고를 통해 사람들이 음식을 기부하거나 집을 수 있습니다. COVID-19 유행병의 초기 진원지였던이 자치구는 광범위한 실업률과 높은 식량 불안정 률을 보였습니다.

( 출처 : 최초의 COVID-19 진원지 중 하나 인 퀸즈가 새로운 위기에 직면 해 있습니다 : 기아 )

NATALIE KEYSSAR의 사진

트럼프 지지자들은 미국 대통령 선거 결과를 알고 싶어 애틀랜타의 조지아 공화당 본부에서 도널드 트럼프 주니어가 주최 한 캠페인 기자 회견에 참석합니다.

CHRISTOPHER GREGORY RIVERA의 사진

관중은 선거의 밤 필라델피아에서 열린 "개표 투표"행사에서 대선에서 도널드 트럼프에 대한 조 바이든의 임박한 승리를 축하합니다.

(From : 선거가 끝났습니다. 미국의 분열 된 반응 사진보기 )

NATALIE KEYSSAR의 사진

트럼프와 바이든 지지자들은 선거 결과가 발표 된 후 랜싱에있는 미시간 주 의사당 계단에서 충돌합니다.

DAVID GUTTENFELDER의 사진

조 바이든이 대선에서 승리 한 후 쿠퍼 셔윈과 조안 테일러는 독립 선언서 액자를 들고 키스를 나눈다. 셔윈과 테일러는 펜실베이니아에서 당선 된 대통령을 조사했습니다.

NATALIE KEYSSAR의 사진

파키스탄의 알리는 타임 스퀘어에서 가족과 함께 Biden-Harris 캠페인의 승리를 축하합니다. 카말라 해리스는 11 월 부통령에 선출되면서 일련의 1 등을 기록했습니다. 해리스는 최초의 여성, 최초의 흑인, 남아시아 출신의 최초의 사람으로 사무실에 선출되었습니다.

ISMAIL FERDOUS의 사진

11 월에 케네디 우주 센터에서 궤도로 이륙하는 SpaceX의 승무원 드래곤 우주선의 장시간 노출. 이 발사는 민간 자금을 지원하는 우주 비행의 중요한 이정표였습니다.

(From : SpaceX 발사는 궤도로 정기 상용 비행을 시작합니다 )

MICHAEL SEELEY의 사진

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사진술Photography

사진이이 잊을 수없는 해를 이해하는 데 어떻게 도움이되는지How photography helps us make sense of this unforgettable year

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과학 기술Science and Technology

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PHOTOGRAPHY

How photography helps us make sense of this unforgettable year

A deadly virus. Lives in lockdown. Passionate calls for justice. The images of 2020 reflected the humanity of a turbulent time.

BY SIDDHARTHA MITTER

PUBLISHED 16 DEC 2020, 16:31 GMT

THROUGH IT ALL, THERE WAS LOVE

05.23, Barzanò, Italy After Italy’s shutdown was lifted, Marta Colzani and Alessio Cavallaro donned masks to be married at the Church of San Vito, an hour’s drive north of Milan. Only the family exchanged hugs at the reception.

PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVIDE BERTUCCIO

This story appears in the January 2021 issue of National Geographic magazine.

The sight is charming and, in all but one respect, familiar.

A young couple in their wedding finery—his sharp suit, her elegant veil—are in church, completing their marriage formalities. She stands close at his shoulder as he writes in the register. The priest looks on, his elbow on the counter, avuncular and affectionate. An ornate metal crucifix in the foreground and a wooden one on the wall behind the couple sanctify the scene. But there is something else. Bride and groom are wearing cloth face masks that match their formal attire. The priest, too, wears a mask, and a plastic visor with an attached transparent face shield.

One year ago this photograph—made by Davide Bertuccio in the town of Barzanò, Italy—would have required interpreting. As 2020 ends, however, what it depicts is instantly clear. The scene is an entry in a new rubric, the COVID wedding. It exemplifies the awkward adjustments that people have been learning, to simply keep going in pandemic times.

BRINGING DIGNITY TO THE DEAD

05.21, Queens, NY Francisco James, resident funeral director at Leo F. Kearns Funeral Home, checks some of the bodies held in a refrigerated container. In an eight-week surge of COVID-19 deaths in New York last spring, the funeral home served 350 families; typically it handles about 75 deaths during a two-month period.

PHOTOGRAPH BY PETER VAN AGTMAEL, MAGNUM PHOTOS

No single image can encapsulate the disruption of a year in which a highly contagious respiratory illness galloped across the planet, shut borders, shrank economies, and upended daily life. But in these newlyweds—obeying new sanitary protocols as they celebrate their union in Lombardy, a region that the virus hit hard—we recognise the urge, and the need, to find the normal in abnormal times.

It was a relentless year. It felt as if eras were ending. Beyond the human toll—the deaths, the lingering effects on survivors, the stress on hospitals and caregivers—the economic fallout was acute. In wealthy countries, joblessness climbed. In poorer countries, existing deprivations worsened. Border closures, the near cessation of travel, and supply chains in disarray seemed to end the notion that globalisation was reversible. In the United States the virus flourished, aided by a dysfunctional response. It was fuelled by deep social and economic divisions and intense political acrimony. The end seemed at hand for the “American century” as the world’s preeminent power drifted from its alliances and commitments. Again in the United States, amid the pandemic, yet another egregious police killing of a Black American, George Floyd, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, forced a tipping point. Led by the Black Lives Matter movement, protests swelled through the summer, often meeting a harsh response from police, and sometimes from self-appointed militias and vigilantes.

IN SOLIDARITY AGAINST RACISM

06.05, Nairobi, Kenya A mural of George Floyd next to the Swahili word haki, which means “justice,” was painted beside a marketplace in Nairobi’s Kibera community by artist Allan Mwangi. As demonstrations continued across the United States, Kenyans demanded justice for their own victims of police killings—and expressed solidarity with protest movements around the globe. From encouraging people to wear masks and wash their hands to organizing food drives, Kibera’s residents also united to fight COVID-19.

PHOTOGRAPH BY NICHOLE SOBECKI

U.S. history seemed at stake as never before. Connecting past to present, protesters also trained their ire on statues and memorials that celebrate the nation's history of violence in figures such as Christopher Columbus and, most of all, symbols of the Confederacy.

The impetus spread across the world. Many monuments came down. Others became gathering points, improvised laboratories of civic imagination—notably the statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia, as seen in Kris Graves’s photo.

A BACKLASH AGAINST SYSTEMIC RACISM

06.18, Richmond, VA The statue of Robert E. Lee is transformed into a Black Lives Matter monument with a projection of George Floyd’s portrait. “It’s time for the healing to start,” tweeted Levar Stoney, Richmond’s mayor. “For public safety, for our history, for our future—the monuments to the Lost Cause are coming down.” Lawsuits attempted to block removal of the statue.

PHOTOGRAPH BY KRIS GRAVES

Every event seemed to intensify America's national madness: devastating wildfires on the West Coast, the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the coronavirus infection of the president. The planet watched the calamity, mesmerised. For many it felt at once alarming and exhausting, a kind of collective out-of-body experience.

TRIBUTE TO A PIONEER

09.19, Lansing, MI A memorial in Michigan was one of many nationwide honoring Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died at 87 on September 18. Ginsburg was a feminist trailblazer long before she was nominated to the high court in 1993 by then President Bill Clinton. She successfully worked on behalf of gender equality in a distinguished legal career. Her death led to a contentious pre-election scramble in the U.S. Senate over filling Ginsburg’s seat. Conservative judge Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed on October 26 as Ginsburg’s replacement.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDREA BRUCE

As the daily coronavirus infection rates reached new highs in November, the U.S. election bred contested results and institutional calamity. The most dire fears of a disrupted election did not materialise, but the narrow vote margins and lengthy counts in several states frustrated an impatient public. The results reflected a country deeply divided and prey to social antagonism and conspiracy theories.

How did photography capture such a year? The first task was to compile the record. The advent of digital culture has confirmed photojournalism as the most immediate, impactful tool for documenting our times. The industry already was growing, as more accessible tools to make and show photographs invited fresh talent from new perspectives. It was building in insight, as women, LGBTQ, Black, and Indigenous photographers and their allies forced reflection on history, trauma, and dignity. And it was exploding within reach, thanks to smartphones, fast internet connections, and digital platforms—particularly Instagram—that swelled the torrent of images at wide disposal, tending toward saturation. In this respect, photojournalism was ready.

But the task was more complicated than just documenting. In 2020 the need for images sharpened as the physical horizon narrowed. The lockdowns, social-distancing rules, and fear of infection combined to transform, in ways still taking form, the terms of social interaction. Much of life moved to the screen, with everything from business meetings to art shows morphing into digital formats. In a time of sudden isolation, image streams that already were overwhelming and addictive became lifelines. “Doomscrolling,” the habit of endlessly perusing media feeds to see the latest horrors, was morbid, perhaps, but essential for some to stay informed and connected.

A DEMAND TO COUNT THE VOTES

11.04, Lansing, MI Kristan Small holds a folded flag in honor of her father, Korean War veteran Gordon Small, who died on May 8 after contracting COVID-19. She joined others gathered at the Michigan State Capitol to call for a complete counting of all presidential election ballots. Citing President Donald Trump’s push to stop the counting of some mail-in ballots, she said, “I’m here because we have a president who has claimed to have absolute authority but hasn’t read the Constitution."

PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID GUTTENFELDER

To make and share images under these circumstances called for more than professional competence. It called for care. Self-care, first of all, by the photographers compelled to chronicle historic events even as journalists, like everyone else, were restricted in movement—and who risked contagion when they did move about. It called for ethical care for the photographers’ subjects. It called for the understanding—arguably long overdue—that no one is safe, everyone is anxious, and yet, like the newlyweds of Barzanò, we are all trying to find a way forward.

Like all edited portfolios of photographs that National Geographic published in 2020, this selection has certain emphases and skews. It represents an effort, guided by the magazine’s tradition and sensibility, to provide some context for the year.

The dominant themes, appropriately, are the pandemic and the protest movement. In a way these infiltrate all the work shown here, as the combination of these events has so much influenced the way American readers in particular have experienced the year. The view expands to science, climate, wildlife, and nature, in keeping with this magazine’s long-standing concerns. The images are a reminder that work in these fields did not cease in 2020—and neither did our responsibility to contend with the fundamental forces shaping our environment. Polar ice did not take the year off from melting because of the pandemic, though some pressures on the natural environment were lessened as more people stayed indoors. And in an atmosphere of intense human anxiety, perspective from the natural world has never been more salutary.

How do we live at once in long history and the condensed present? By throwing up emergency conditions, 2020 brought forward this fundamental paradox. It was a year that forced adaptation in the face of existential uncertainty. But we were not without resources. Language, for example, adjusted. Words such as “confinement,” with its evocations of a Victorian-era sanatorium, or “quarantine,” with its roots in medieval Venice, emerged from the historical murk and regained currency. New phrases sprouted: “social distancing,” “essential workers,” “Zooming”—a new lexicon for our efforts to carry on.

In these images the pull is toward humanity observed in the process of muddling through, finding a way. Many of the year’s most powerful photographs captured the fundamental human work of caring, convalescing, coping, worrying, waiting, responding, resisting, mourning. Simple work. Essential work. In a raw year the signal images did not have to be complicated. Some of the most memorable are not so much layered with information as seething with emotion.

On the bed rests a stiffened body, sealed head to toe in plastic wrapping, clearly deemed unsafe for contact. The photograph by Joshua Irwandi was made in Indonesia, but nothing in the scene reveals this. The hospital room suggests that no effort or resource was spared to save the patient. The eye moves from the body to the window. Open curtains expose a purple-blue night sky, hinting at a darkened world beyond. Reflected in the window is the fluorescent bar of the room’s light fixture.

A COVID-19 VICTIM BECOMES A MODERN MUMMY

04.18, Indonesia The body of a suspected coronavirus victim, wrapped in plastic, awaits a body bag in an Indonesian hospital. The multiple layers were part of a hospital protocol to help suppress the spread of the virus. As is the case with most victims, family members were not allowed to say goodbye. The uproar over this photo, first published in July by National Geographic, thrust photographer Joshua Irwandi into the spotlight. Celebrities and government officials in Indonesia had denied that COVID-19 was an issue in the country, which had lifted many social restrictions. This picture said otherwise. “It has galvanized and renewed discussions of COVID-19 in Indonesia just as the country was then preparing for a ‘new normal,’ ” said Irwandi.

PHOTOGRAPH BY JOSHUA IRWANDI

It’s a photograph of death—a victim, probably of the coronavirus, fell ill and died in the hospital. But there’s more: the sarcophagus-like allusions to ancient practices of treating the dead, the witching hour that engulfs the city, the window that beckons the soul. The hospital room signals modernity and its continuous quest for solutions. But that quest has hit a limit here, and the scene that results pushes us out of the contemporary into ancestral time.

This sense of a limit reached, a point of impossibility, recurs in the images of eerily vacated spaces. Rafał Milach’s photo of the reading room in the Jagiellonian University library in Kraków, Poland, is a geometric composition viewed from its mezzanine level as a field of desks, each with two chairs pulled up. Missing humans are suggested as ghosts by each desk’s tilted reading lamps. The absence of patrons pulls us out of the present, first by decades, in the building’s solemn mid-20th-century European architecture, then further back, via the large print reproduction that controls the space between the stacks and the skylight, to what must be medieval Kraków, dense and presumably bustling, in the middle distance behind the protagonists in the landscape.

THE EMPTY SCHOOL

03.10, Kraków, Poland Jagiellonian University, founded in 1364, has survived religious upheaval, annexations, and world wars, in addition to the deportation of 155 academics to a German concentration camp in 1939. On March 10 the school suspended lectures and closed many campus operations, emptying one of the world’s oldest and most resilient learning institutions. The main reading hall, shown here, turned desolate. Schools around the globe made similar accommodations. From preschools to law schools, educational leaders are grappling with how to reopen safely. For those at Jagiellonian, the 2020-21 school year is a blend of online and in-person learning.

PHOTOGRAPH BY RAFAŁ MILACH, MAGNUM PHOTOS

When it might not be safe to breathe around other people, the structure and arrangements of society come into question. Eventually an answer will arrive because it must. But first everything had to stop. Around the world there was a moment when humans sheltered in isolation as much as they could, as shared spaces, public and private, shut down.

In Yogyakarta, Indonesia, a new airport opened one month before COVID-19 stopped aviation. In Muhammad Fadli’s photo of the road approaching the facility, streetlights cast a bleary glow over a deserted landscape of grass patches, asphalt, and concrete. Newly planted saplings in the foreground are the sole sign of life. They’re still propped and guided by posts, fragile, as if hostages to human hubris and overbuilding.

EMPTY SKIES, EMPTY ROADS

04.25, Yogyakarta, indonesia One day after a temporary freeze on commercial flights and sea travel, nothing stirred at Yogyakarta International Airport. The new facility in Central Java was built to handle 20 million travelers a year. But less than a month after it formally opened in April, the government announced strict travel restrictions. Travel was halted into and out of Indonesia as COVID-19 spread around the world. The skies were, briefly, vacant. The airport reopened in August with the president’s promise it would be the nation’s busiest, once a COVID-19 vaccine was developed.

PHOTOGRAPH BY MUHAMMAD FADLI

ON THE FRONT LINES IN A GLOBAL CRISIS

04.14, Istanbul, Turkey A city employee disinfects a street in Beyoğlu, a tourist district empty of tourists. When communities shut down across the world, many people could retreat to their homes. Others, newly deemed essential, had to keep working. Like many countries, Turkey sent out armies of workers in protective gear to spray the streets, hoping to contain the virus and, perhaps, reassure its citizens that action was being taken. The World Health Organization later warned that this method was ineffective at halting the spread of the coronavirus and that the disinfectants could potentially harm people’s health.

PHOTOGRAPH BY EMIN ÖZMEN, MAGNUM PHOTOS

SLOWING THE SPREAD

04.14, Seoul, South Korea At the H Plus Yangji Hospital in Seoul, a walk-in testing clinic is set up like a row of phone booths to prevent contact between patients and medical staff. Nose and mouth swabs take less than three minutes, and test results can be returned in four to six hours. Experience with previous disease outbreaks prepared South Korea for the COVID-19 pandemic. The country already had a legal framework for contact tracing, and most residents stayed home and wore masks in public. The government worked with the private sector to swiftly ramp up testing. There are hundreds of testing sites throughout the country.

PHOTOGRAPH BY JUN MICHAEL PARK

There’s action, by contrast, in Emin Özmen’s image of a worker in head-to-toe protective gear cleaning a street in Istanbul, Turkey. Disinfection was a visible response to the crisis, though as the contagion dynamics were better understood, such steps were decried as “hygiene theatre.” Jun Michael Park’s photograph of activities at a walk-up testing clinic in Seoul, however, brims with competence. We experience the scene from the health workers’ point of view. Equipped and protected, they administer the swabs through a tube arrangement that runs from the glassed-in booth. This vignette of South Korea’s swift health response is a symbolic indictment of other countries’ travails.

It might have been tempting to portray 2020 as an arriving dystopia. New York City, where this essay was written, felt haunted in late March and April: a great metropolitan silence, cloaking the careful movements of those deemed essential, who travelled with maximum economy of words and gestures—all scored by the endless wail of ambulance sirens. Variants of this shock had been felt already at high intensity in Wuhan, China; Bergamo, Italy; and other places.

THE LITTLE GESTURES

05.09, Moscow, Russia “It was shocking inside the hospitals,” said photographer Nanna Heitmann, who documented Moscow under lockdown. At Hospital Number 52, medical staff like this nurse handed out flowers to World War II veterans and other elderly patients to commemorate Victory Day in May. One doctor brought a guitar and serenaded the residents with old Soviet war songs.

PHOTOGRAPH BY NANNA HEITMANN

COVID-19 TREATMENTS ARE GETTING BETTER

05.09, Moscow, Russia One of the most helpful therapies for COVID-19 is one of the simplest: turning patients, such as this intensive care patient in Moscow, onto their stomachs, which improves the lungs’ ability to get oxygen into the blood. Nearly a year into the pandemic, doctors are getting a handle on which medications and techniques best treat the disease. They’ve learned that the antiviral remdesivir shortens recovery time, while the steroid dexamethasone cuts the risk of death by a third in patients requiring ventilation.

PHOTOGRAPH BY NANNA HEITMANN

NURSES PUSHED TO EXHAUSTION

05.01, Mons, Belgium Taking a brief break during ceaseless frontline work treating patients with the coronavirus, nurses Caroline Quinet (at left) and Yasmina Cheroual rest outside CHU Ambroise Paré hospital. The pair, who had known each other for only a few months, pulled long shifts in the intensive care unit. Like many medical facilities around the world, Belgian hospitals initially were overwhelmed by a rush of patients with the virulent, ever changing new disease. These nurses, pulled from their standard duties, were thrown into full-time COVID-19 work—reinforcement troops for a long, exhausting battle.

PHOTOGRAPH BY CÉDRIC GERBEHAYE

At that moment one could emphasise the morbid strangeness, the sadness and trauma in hospitals, the throb of machinery. Two portraits by Nanna Heitmann, made in a Moscow hospital, present as well as any the simplification of human relations into two archetypal roles, patient and caregiver. Cédric Gerbehaye’s black-and-white image of two nurses in Mons, Belgium, taking a break conveys the daunting scale of their task: They seem small, crouched on a curb against a wall—yet their affectionate stance reveals the solidarity that links them.

We have references for the photography of medical crises. Nichole Sobecki, who has an image in this portfolio of a musician in Nairobi, Kenya, performing the coronavirus awareness song he composed, was on assignment for National Geographic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2019, photographing an outbreak of Ebola. The West African Ebola epidemic of 2014-16 primed viewers for the spacesuit-like apparel and tent hospitals. (It’s worth considering whether COVID-19 patients in rich countries, and white patients especially, were offered more dignity in their portrayals than Liberian Ebola sufferers.)

‘WE HAVE TO BE OUR OWN SOLUTION’

04.01, Nairobi, Kenya Musician Daniel Owino Okoth, known as Futwax, sings his song “Have You Sanitized?” with his four-year-old son and apprentice keyboardist, Julian Austin. From his home in Nairobi’s Kibera neighborhood, Futwax wrote and recorded the song to encourage safe health practices during the coronavirus pandemic. “I’m a community leader and icon here, and people listen to my music across Kenya,” he said. “So it’s my duty to make sure that everyone knows what’s happening and are doing what they can to try and stay safe. We have to be our own solution.” Futwax, who walked through town with a megaphone promoting safety, noted that social distancing is not an option for Kibera’s residents. “We share toilets. We share entrances and exits of houses. We share where we iron our clothes after washing. We don’t have supermarkets; we share kiosks. We saw people who were taken away by ambulance, people from the slums who were put into government isolation centers, you know? So I decided to take responsibility in my own hands.”

PHOTOGRAPH BY NICHOLE SOBECKI

The genre goes back, in fact, at least as far as the influenza pandemic of 1918 and a fascinating set of period photographs that, filtered by generations of archivists, tend to recur in most presentations. Their scope is relatively narrow: field hospitals, medical staff, social hygiene. They trigger echoes and offer some pointed lessons—for example, a trolley in San Francisco, the conductor on its step, preparing to verify that boarding passengers are wearing masks, as required. But such photographs are far from a panoramic account of the flu’s ramifications.

Today’s flood of images and their mass circulation, by contrast, present the opportunity of archival abundance and tell many stories. The virus, as we know, did not go away in 2020. It settled in and merged into each country or city’s ongoing social history.

Police in Louisville, Kentucky, killed Breonna Taylor on March 13, 2020. Information about the case emerged gradually over the next two months. Police in Minneapolis killed George Floyd on May 25, 2020. In late May, protests erupted in both cities and soon across the country, sparked by the extreme brutality of these two deaths of unarmed Black Americans—one shot in her home during a botched raid and left for a crucial time without medical attention, the other suffocated under a policeman’s knee—atop the macabre parade of similar incidents in recent years.

In that sense the deaths were grimly familiar, as were the protests complete with confrontations with militarised police and National Guard troops and varying degrees of property destruction. But a distinctive change appeared in the images. It marked them of this moment—the masks signalled the stress and risk of protesting amid a pandemic. It marked the moment as transforming, no more so than when the protests mobilised around monuments that celebrated racists from the past, giving rise to a wave of topplings—some conducted by protesters, others decided by local authorities—unlike anything in Americans’ memory.

By June the hub of U.S. visual culture was arguably Richmond, Virginia, where the monuments were the grandest and came down fast, by decision of the mayor, after protesters began by pulling down a statue of Confederate president Jefferson Davis. The exception was a huge equestrian statue of Robert E. Lee that came under the purview of the state rather than the city government, and whose removal, promised by the governor, became tangled in legal challenges. Instead, community members “recontextualised” the statue and its circular plaza by graffiti, protests, performances, photographic projections by local artists, and even a vegetable garden. Activists planted signs informally renaming the plaza in honour of Marcus-David Peters, a Richmond man who died at the hands of police in 2018. It was the most vibrant American civic space of 2020: grassroots and unauthorised action attesting to great historical shifts under way. Kris Graves’s photograph of the statue seems to acknowledge that today’s combat is between Goliath and not one, but myriad Davids, gathered in their diversity.

THERE IS NEW LIFE

04.29, New York, NY At the height of the pandemic in New York City, Kimberly Bonsignore learned that the hospital where she planned to give birth wasn’t allowing family members inside. She chose to have her baby at home, with her husband and toddler—and midwife Cara Muhlhahn and doula Angelique Clarke to help. Clarke set up a birthing pool in the family’s living room and texted Muhlhahn when Bonsignore’s water broke. In less than two hours, Suzette was born. The baby was unresponsive at first, but when Muhlhahn performed CPR, the newborn let out a wail. Moments later, they all heard the nightly sound of New Yorkers clapping to show their appreciation for first responders.

PHOTOGRAPH BY JACKIE MOLLOY

The image reflects an evening projection by Richmond artists Alex Criqui and Dustin Klein. Over the pedestal appears the face of George Floyd, whose strong, solemn traits evoke sculptural traditions of their own. The Confederate general is grandly silhouetted against orange-gray cloud, but across the horse’s flank appear the letters “BLM,” for Black Lives Matter. The multicoloured slogans are now in the penumbra, in the image’s lower part. Here is a kind of exorcism, conjuring demons present and past. Yet the projection is ephemeral, as is the civic reclamation of this place. The future of the statue—and by implication, the old order—is unknown. The situation is provisional, making the moment all the more poignant.

How are we to live in provisional times? The year 2020 was about cancelled plans and unsatisfactory adaptations, from masks to Zoom calls to families facing impossible decisions among improvised models as a new school year began. Domestic photographs, of household life in times of distancing, conveyed the changed circumstances.

In Jackie Molloy’s photograph of a New York City mother and her home-birthed baby is a hint this choice might become more common. Many photographers turned inward, documenting life in a limited perimeter. Alessandra Sanguinetti’s image, made near her home in California of her daughter’s socially distanced, outdoor visit with a friend, or Ian Teh’s self-portrait with his wife as they recline on a couch by the window and look out at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, are examples of the resulting, wistful subgenre. Slowing down, it turned out, had merits as well. In an unhealthy year, rest was essential for resilience and resistance.

KEEPING IN TOUCH WITH FRIENDS

04.06, Santa Rosa, CA Whether through Zoom happy hours, backyard gatherings, or socially distanced walks, people have found ways during the pandemic to connect with the people they care about. “My daughter, Catalina, misses her friends very much, so we did the rounds in our car and visited her best friends from far away,” says Alessandra Sanguinetti. “Here she’s breaking the rules and touching fingertips with her best friend, Avery.”

PHOTOGRAPH BY ALESSANDRA SANGUINETTI, MAGNUM PHOTOS

IN LOCKDOWN, A CHANCE TO GET CLOSE

03.30, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Photographer Ian Teh spends much of his working life on the road. The pandemic allowed him to stay home with his wife, Chloe Lim, in Kuala Lumpur. “My partner and I are lucky that both our families are safe,” he says. “The pandemic has been an opportunity for us to connect with our loved ones, virtually.” One day he took a self-portrait: “We are sitting by our favorite spot in our apartment, looking out to the nearby houses and greenery. It’s peaceful.”

PHOTOGRAPH BY IAN TEH

The problem, at its root, was trust. The reality of asymptomatic spread, with its implication that anyone you met might be carrying the disease, and so might you, brought home a collapse of social confidence.

Trust in government seemed to be demolished by the mediocrity, corruption, and authoritarian tendencies of politicians. For many, trust in business and the wisdom of the marketplace was overrun too, exposed by abysmal inequalities. Demagogues stirred racism, xenophobia, and the rejection of science. Partisan cable channels and the relentless algorithms of social media fortified cocoons of self-reinforcing prejudice. Conspiracy theories spread. By the time it became clear that an easy step toward defeating the pandemic was to wear face masks, many societies confronted a lethal shortage.

The collapse of social trust was too total a phenomenon for photography—or journalism, or art—to somehow repair. But it was deeply relevant to the work. It raised the stakes.

The effort to reconsider the ethics of photography, to face the past and ongoing harms of the racist, colonial, and anthropological gaze, must continue, but it’s not enough. Attention to dignity and agency, to damage from emotional bombardment and recirculation of images of trauma must continue. But they’re not enough.

In a time when trust is damaged, the question is how images can contribute to care and mutuality, to stitching a more equitable society. The possibility is there, percolating. One might be inspired by the mobilization of photographers and artists of Beirut, Lebanon, after 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate left for years at the port exploded on August 4, causing massive destruction. They photographed and shared images, but also took charge of the narrative, giving shape to the story before the travelling press arrived. They joined efforts to clear rubble and locate survivors; launched fund drives for the most vulnerable, such as migrant workers; and used social media to forge connections with outside supporters and hold to account the government’s crisis response.

“It is very difficult for me to take pictures in this nightmare,” Beirut photographer Myriam Boulos wrote on Instagram. “But I feel like we have to document, document, and document.” Looking at 2020 was complicated: ethically, logistically, emotionally. But we had to look. Out of that imperative to document, as Boulos noted. And because looking, interpreting, and trying to form understandings are things that humans do.

Perhaps we will find that 2020 has helped us to see.

Siddhartha Mitter specialises in culture journalism and often writes about how art and artists contribute to social change. This is his first feature article for National Geographic.

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