The most enduring photos of 2023 from the Washington Post

Dec. 6 at 6:00 a.m.

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Fire and ice, rivers of mud; destruction from the skies, emotions overflowing on the ground. This was a year of terror and sorrow, of forces larger than all of us flexing their fierce power, and of mankind’s everlasting strength, our ability to carry forth, to mourn and to survive.

Weather and war, finger-pointing and final farewells, each crisis brought questions about what was to blame — human folly or forces beyond our control?

The lasting images of this year offer a chance to rise out of the bewildering and consider whether the answer to that question is just Yes — yes, it’s our own dang fault, and yes, we are small in the face of such monumental challenges, and yes, amid all this death and doom, we hold each other and run our babies to safety and push through the snowpack and the sandstorm and the raging rivers and the bomb-battered cities, ever determined to live on.

Israel and Gaza, Ukraine and Maui, the halls of Congress and the well of the Tennessee House, the steps of the Supreme Court and the bullet-torn streets of Lewiston and Monterey Park and Baltimore — they are all places where people this year confronted forces that could seem overwhelming: war and natural disaster and man-made troubles, too.

To heighten your experience, we’ve created a musical score to accompany these images.

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People took to the streets to yell at each other about whether abortion should be legal and how old French people should be to get retirement benefits and how to manage the flow of immigrants into the United States and what should be done about all the Americans who don’t have a place to live.

People ran from missiles in Gaza, from overflowing rivers in China and India, from a tornado in Mississippi and from encroaching ocean waves in North Carolina. On California’s central coast, a little boy, wide-eyed and sad, stares at his flooded neighborhood. On a narrow street in drought-stricken Kolkata, India, a man, bent by his burden, walks to fill water in two giant jugs to bring to parched residents. In the middle of a river that divides Mexico and the United States, a man struggles to lift a baby above the water as they swim toward what they have bet their lives will be a better existence.

Life is a never-ending quest, these images say — a search for peace and water and freedom and a place where children can fill us with possibility.

But the pictures also say we are capable of terrible deeds — a bloody knife, left behind on a tile floor in an Israeli family’s home after Hamas’s frenzy of savagery, testifies to the ultimate expression of man’s hatred of his fellow beings. Twelve hundred miles from that theater of war, another long-running display of force persists, in Ukraine, where this year’s images look too much like last year’s — wrecked buildings, ravaged human bodies.

Even here, however, love shines through. A soldier helps an elderly woman leave the danger that her home has become. A woman in Kyiv snuggles against her husband, a Ukrainian soldier, his hand blown off, his face charred in battle against the Russians.

Somehow, they each have glimmers of smiles.

What is to be done about these troubles? Who will help us claw our way to a better time? The pictures show men in blue suits and women in red and white, in debate and negotiation in Washington’s hallowed halls, but there are no celebrations of progress. Rather, people needle their opponents, defend their positions, glower over their predicaments.

Different images point to a more promising path: A woman in the twilight of life, finally free to take a thrill ride that was denied her in youth. People show off and show up, making themselves up for a carnival, dressing up for a show, spiffing up for a rite of passage — up, up, up into a new year, ever searching for reason to celebrate, ever choosing hope.

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Forces of nature

It can seem pretty biblical on this planet of ours these days. The changing Earth has unleashed terrifying extremes of weather — quakes and storms, rising seas and roiling winds. As the very shape of the continents shifts, the line between forces of nature and the impacts of human behavior often seems thin. Swollen rivers, tornado-tattered towns, paralyzing heat and raging fires all push people out of their homes and onto the road. But as ever, people persevere. In Truckee, Calif., a UPS man climbs over mounds of snow because that’s what people do: They deliver.

“It’s very sad. The heat has been very stressful on a lot of species all throughout the environment, especially with this extreme heat we’re undergoing right now.”Bob Fox, executive director of Wild at Heart

“This is the first time I’m even able to express tears. Everyone’s volunteering and pushing forward. But this is one of the only times we’re taking time out to actually be in it, and focus on Carole.”Pam Thomas

“I realized when the climate started changing, we didn’t have an answer for ocean acidification, and ocean warming, and ocean rise. We had to figure out how to grow things on the land and in the sea.”Dune Lankard, kelp farmer and conservationist

“I didn’t do this to get famous; I just want to crab. There’s not a next generation of fishermen. … My main point of social media is to make people care about watermen.”Luke McFadden, first-generation crabber

Armed force: Ukraine and Russia

Born in the impulses of the moment, war too often turns into a state of being, a long slog through pain and destruction that seems to know no end. The images from Ukraine this year look all too much like those of last year: homes reduced to shells, people queuing up for bread, soldiers helping their own and hurting the other side. Through it all, people decide to stay, to fight for a better day, or simply to make it to the next one.

“To have lived here all my life, and now not knowing where I’m going next …”Anastasiya Mezina

Armed force: Israel and Gaza

Startled and seared by the brutality of Hamas’s attack, Israel responded with overwhelming force. The scale of the death and destruction in Israel and Gaza was historic and shocking, yet in both places, the scope of the violence was best understood at the most basic level, in the funerals and the faces, the families torn to pieces, the sudden orphans and the bereft mothers and fathers. Limp bodies, panicked parents, pancaked homes — the images of war can be hard to look at, yet they call us to consider what people are capable of and to try to understand why we so often resort to force.

“Photographing the death of many children, women and elderly — entire families killed — it has affected me. I cried many times faced with the severity of the scenes. At some point, I expected to see my own family among the killed or the injured.”Loay Ayyoub, photojournalist on assignment in Gaza for The Washington Post

“I’ve never seen this many bodies essentially cremated in a single event.”Tal Simmons, forensic anthropologist from Virginia Commonwealth University

“The worst is yet to come.”Zoufi, an al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades commander. He said he awoke on Oct. 7 to the news of Hamas’s rampage and asked his wife to slap him to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. Then he laughed with joy.

In politics, the force of argument

This was a year of finger-pointing and finger-jabbing, whether over abortion or the failings of the speaker of the House, but it was also a year of politicians joining hands, the Ukrainian president joining Democratic and Republican leaders in solidarity. The dominant images in politics, however, were of tumult and trouble: A renegade House member heckling the president. A former president, frightened and angry, entering a courtroom to face charges against him. One of his prosecutors, confident, ready to make her case.

“I think one of the most positive qualities any individual can have is what I call the phoenix syndrome, the mystical bird that became the symbol of rising from your own ashes. That’s the challenge of life. You’ve got to recover from your own ashes, many, many times.”Dianne Feinstein

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“I felt it’s worth recording our life in America. I have seldom documented my family cohesively, and observed them closely enough. They were water and air to me in the past, important, but sometimes unnoticeable.” Li Qiang, photographer

A Chinese photographer captures his family’s immigration journey to America

“They didn’t have to prove anything else. They didn’t have to tell us who they were. They didn’t have to do anything extra. They just had to show up.”Chase Strangio, ACLU lawyer who served as a mentor and guide to the young organizers

At trans prom, joy is a political statement

A sadly unstoppable force

These are images we see every year — people frozen in a moment, rocked out of their routines by the actions of one person using deadly force against others, usually strangers. This year, it was a town in Maine, a school in Nashville, a dance studio in Monterey Park, Calif. One shooter, many dead. One shooter, entire communities collapsed into shock, grief, anger. And then a coming together, a resolve to make things change. And then the next year, the images repeat.

“This should have been a safe space but someone decided to bring a gun and rain terror on our community.”Rick Edwards, Richmond police chief

“That’s a violation of anybody’s trust or humanity. It’s inhumane. It’s not science anymore. It’s like barbarism or ghoulish harvesting.”Martha Sara Jack, a 77-year-old retired nurse and social worker, and Mary Sara's cousin

Revealing the Smithsonian’s ‘racial brain collection’

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Life force

Through it all, the zest for joy and satisfaction somehow prevail. The year’s most powerful images speak of doom, terror, tragedy — the terrible wrongs people commit against each other. Yet any year’s most meaningful pictures include depictions of people aiming their creative force at basic goals of sustaining and relishing life. Getting dressed for the prom, adopting a look to demonstrate who you are, returning to a simple childhood joy — these are the moments people savor, the ones that get us through the turbulence, the ones we hope will truly endure.

“Part of it, too, it’s kind of nostalgic for me because when I learned photography I learned it by doing black-and-white photography early in my career. And then I love the old-time street photography, too. I’m kind of inspired by that.”Robert Miller, The Post's deputy director of photography, who also likes to capture the streets of the D.C. region

“Drag is one of the few spaces that I receive the affirmation for the hard work and the intention that I put into something.” King Molasses

“Raised along gravel roads in the rolling hills of central Indiana has always imparted a deep connection to small towns and rural life. A story examining Virginia communities outside of the Beltway and far from bustling metro D.C. area gave me the opportunity to embrace my childhood roots.”Matt McClain, a Post photojournalist

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“I think that’s why we, as photographers, are so drawn to the dog show every year. We’re watching these two creatures in this symbiotic relationship present themselves publicly to be judged.” Peter Fisher, photographer and proud owner of a 2-year-old Boykin spaniel named Waylon

Poodles and mastiffs and hounds, oh my!

About this story

Photo editing by MaryAnne Golon, Dee Swann and Troy Witcher with support from Lauren Bulbin, Morgan Coates, Chloe Coleman, Kenneth Dickerman, Kaitlyn Dolan, Jennifer Beeson Gregory, Jintak Han, Moira Haney, Olivier Laurent, Annaliese Nurnberg, Jen Samuel, Sandra Stevenson, Maya Valentine, and Amanda Voisard. Audio production and sound design by Bishop Sand. Introductions by Marc Fisher. Copy editing by Frances Moody and Shibani Shah and Jordan Melendrez. Design and development by Stephanie Hays. Design editing by Brian Gross.

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Table of contents

Forces of nature

Armed force: Ukraine and Russia

Armed force: Israel and Gaza

In politics, the force of argument

A sadly unstoppable force

Life force

About this story