Dec. 21: Week in Photography
Your lens to the internet's most powerful photographs.
 📸For Your 👀 Only: How To Sum Up This Year, Of All Years How to summarize this year? It has encompassed national grief, widespread unemployment, a divisive election, and local tragedies that have once again highlighted the ongoing struggle against racism within our society. While it has been difficult, stressful, and often terribly sad, we hope that history will mark this year as a turning point toward better times.
Our “Most Powerful Photos of the Year” story is one of my favorite projects. It is always a creative struggle, narrowing down the entirety of any year into something that feels inclusive to all events and also not overwhelming. Due to the sheer number of images we consider, we usually approach this project the old-fashioned way, with prints laid out on a conference room table and physically added or taken away as we finalize the edit. It's a fun process that allows for the year to be seen from a new angle and encourages discussions with colleagues over what, exactly, "powerful" means.
 Kathleen Flynn / Reuters With concerns over COVID-19 making an office visit impossible, we instead conducted this edit virtually — it worked, we could both see the images and make selects, but it was hard to get the same level of perspective. The intensity of this year made the project doubly hard — we chose to break out climate events into their own separate thing and to focus more on the United States than we perhaps would have otherwise.
For the sake of sanity, we limit the edit to wire images, many of which have been widely seen. I have a firm rule that no matter what happened, the final story should not have more than 60 images — otherwise, it's too much to consider, even for the most ardent photography lover. That means that some images are not included on technicalities (they were taken by another outlet, for instance, or by a private individual on social media) and that some images, while very powerful, are cut to make way for others that allow for a better balance in the overall piece. The intent of this list is to start a conversation about our world and about photography while looking ahead to the future — it is by no means conclusive.
Throughout everything, we have endeavored to bring you powerful imagery, thoughtful interviews, and perspectives that deepen the online discourse (and sometimes, when the moment is right, also entertain 😉). We have some great things in store for 2021 — but for now, a look back feels important. We have a series of end-of-year pieces that will be coming out within the next two weeks, and a few pieces of holiday cheer — keep an eye on the JPG page, and follow us on Instagram. We will see you back here in January!  Jordi Vidal / Getty Images  📸THE WEEK'S PHOTO STORIES FROM BUZZFEED NEWS 📸 This week, we tried to look on the bright side, and talked with some photographers who are making the best of it — and largely succeeding. And, as always, here are some of the best photo stories from around the internet that caught our eye and kept us thinking. WHAT A DECADE OF CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS LOOKS LIKE  Danelle Manthey
ACTIVISTS IN CALIFORNIA LITERALLY LIVE IN TREES TO BLOCK LOGGING COMPANIES  Cristian Caceres Granda
📸SOME HOPE 📸  Timothy C. Clary / Getty Images Snow! Children play in Central Park, New York after a winter storm hit the northeast United States "That's it from us this time — see you next year!" —Kate and Pia “We are making photographs to understand what our lives mean to us.” — Ralph Hattersley
📝 This letter was edited and brought to you by the News Photo team. Kate Bubacz is the photo director based in New York and loves dogs. You can always reach us here.
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