Review of the Year 2020: Top 25 Photography

This year’s most popular photography stories are, perhaps unsurprisingly, largely not about lockdown. In a year where many of us were grounded and cut off from anything beyond our immediate surroundings, escapism was the order of the day, most days. Photographers gave us a portal into other lives, from Rinchen Ato’s documentation of Tibet’s Kham region, to Gabriele Galimberti’s incredible Toy Stories series showing children surrounded by their favourite objects. There was plenty of light relief too, invariably in the form of fluffy animals such as Walter Chandoha’s dogs, Daniel Gebhart de Koekkoek’s guinea pigs, Dag Knudsen’s animal portraits, and Sam Youkilis’ depiction of the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. And some potatoes.

Having said that, a few standout projects captured the zeitgeist perfectly. Fergus Coyle showed us a less reported side of Wuhan, Jamie Lee Curtis reported from inside the LA quarantine protests, and Chris Dorley-Brown documented London in a rare state of emptiness during lockdown.