Every year the TIME photo department sits down to curate the strongest images that crossed our path over the previous 12 months. And every year, sitting with the images, we find ourselves mulling the ways this collection feels heavier than the last, how the year produced images unlike what we’ve seen before.
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But this year something else, a tautness, runs through the collection – the tension of conflict, the anxiety over outcome, anticipation of excitement or in possibility. Somehow, these photographers are able to capture that coiled feeling and hold it within the four walls of a frame. Be it by impeccable timing or intentional framing, they have created a time capsule that feels as if it’s about to be opened.
You can feel it in the perfectly captured moment of Brazilian surfer Gabriel Medina suspended triumphantly in the air after earning the highest single-wave score in Olympic history, a passing moment on television frozen in time by photographer Jerome Brouillet. You can sense it in the image by photographer Al Drago of Journalist Evan Gershkovich on the tarmac as he approaches friends, colleagues–and the precipice of a year-long fight to bring him home. It’s in the frame captured by photographer Anna Moneymaker, of President Trump seconds after an assassination attempt in Butler, Pa., the suspense of the moment before he rose, throwing his fist in the air.
What follows is our attempt to string together that tension and bring it to the eyes of our readers. We hope it captures not only the events that defined the world over the last months, but also why, on the cusp of an uncertain new year, that world feels the way it does.
– Kim Bubello, Senior Photo Editor
Warning: Some of the following images are graphic in nature and might be disturbing to some viewers.
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