The photo team at The New Yorker assigned more breaking-news commissions this year than ever before. In October, the photojournalist Adriana Zehbrauskas accompanied the staff writer Jonathan Blitzer on a weeklong trip to follow the migrant caravan as it moved north through Mexico. During the midterms, the political photographer Mark Peterson captured, in one powerful image, the Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum in a voting booth with two of his small children standing by. And, after receiving a phone call from our director of photography late one evening in September, the photographer Benjamin Rasmussen woke up before dawn to take a portrait of Deborah Ramirez, who had told Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer of a college encounter with the Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Standing alone in the morning light, Ramirez exuded both quiet resilience and resignation, a poignant moment of calm in the midst a chaotic and anguished nomination process.
Deborah Ramirez photographed for the report “Senate Democrats Investigate a New Allegation of Sexual Misconduct, from Brett Kavanaugh’s College Years,” by Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer.
Photograph by Benjamin Rasmussen for The New Yorker
The year wasn’t all investigative reporting or breaking news. Some of our favorite images of 2018 accompanied long magazine Profiles—of Donald Glover, or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie—and meticulously planned photo essays. Pari Dukovic travelled to the French Riviera in search of the flowers that make up Chanel No. 5 perfume; the petals in the resulting images are a stunning shade of pink, so vibrant that you expect the fragrance to emanate from the page. The thirty-year-old Awol Erizku paid homage to the brilliance of the “Black Panther” costume designer Ruth E. Carter with cinematic, dramatic photographs that contain whole narratives themselves. Carter herself was on set, working alongside Erizku to direct models and share stories about her collaborations with Spike Lee. Davide Monteleone traversed the Asian continent for his extensive coverage of the “new” Silk Road, while the Swiss-Guinean photographer Namsa Leuba captured the confident poses and eclectic styles of a group of young Nigerian musicians.
Costumes from the films “Malcolm X,” and “Do the Right Thing,” from the portfolio “Ruth E. Carter’s Threads of History,” by Awol Erizku, with text by Doreen St. Félix.
Photograph by Awol Erizku for The New Yorker
Costumes by Ruth E. Carter from “Selma” include a beaded dress for Coretta Scott King and a dark suit for Martin Luther King, Jr.
Photograph by Awol Erizku for The New Yorker
As always, some of the most evocative photographs in the magazine this year were those that illustrated our fiction section. Recently, the South African photographer Roger Ballen constructed one of his unsettling dioramas for Joy Williams’s “Chaunt,” the story of a grieving mother and her stay at a remote asylum. To accompany “Orange World,” by Karen Russell, Hannah Whitaker fashioned a chilling silhouette that suggests the vulnerability and terror that can accompany pregnancy and childbearing. You can see these and many of our other favorite photographs below.
A conceptual photograph made for the short story “Orange World,” by Karen Russell.
Photograph by Hannah Whitaker for The New Yorker; prop styling by Heather Greene
Children at the border, from Jonathan Blitzer’s dispatch “The Migrant Caravan Reaches a Crossroads in Southern Mexico.”
Photographs by Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New Yorker
A portrait of Chan Marshall for “Cat Power’s Past Imbues ‘Wanderer’ with Empathy and Weight,” by Amanda Petrusich.
Photograph by Inez and Vinoodh for The New Yorker
The writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie photographed for a Profile by Larissa MacFarquhar.
Photograph by Pari Dukovic for The New Yorker
Jenny Kendler’s installation “Bird Watching,” at Storm King Art Center, representing a hundred eyes of as many threatened or endangered species.
Photograph by Pari Dukovic for The New Yorker
George Clinton, P-Funk’s founder, photographed for a music review by Hua Hsu.
Photograph by Andres Serrano for The New Yorker
The hand of Jahi McMath, a teen-age girl who was declared brain-dead by the hospital, photographed for “What Does It Mean to Die?,” by Rachel Aviv.
Photograph by Doug DuBois for The New Yorker
Donald Glover photographed for a Profile by Tad Friend.
Photographs by Awol Erizku for The New Yorker
The Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum taking his kids to the polls.
Photograph by Mark Peterson / Redux for The New Yorker
The Afrobeats musician Falana photographed by Namsa Leuba for the portfolio “Beats Generation,” with text by Kelefa Sanneh.
Photograph by Namsa Leuba for The New Yorker
From the portfolio “A New Silk Road,” showing the pathways that China is building to Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East, by Davide Monteleone, with text by Jiayang Fan.
Photograph by Davide Monteleone for The New Yorker
A mother holds up a blouse that her daughter left behind for the report “When Deportation Is a Death Sentence,” by Sarah Stillman.
Photograph by Carolyn Drake / Magnum for The New Yorker
Julia Louis-Dreyfus photographed for a Profile by Ariel Levy.
Photograph by Ryan Pfluger for The New Yorker
A photograph taken for the short story “The Boarder,” written by Isaac Bashevis Singer.
Photograph by Jack Davison for The New Yorker
The American soprano Kelly Griffin and the Angolan tenor Nelson Ebo play a faithful couple in Beethoven’s only opera, “Fidelio,” at Baruch Performing Arts Center.
Photograph by Mamadi Doumbouya for The New Yorker
The painter Alex Katz next to a portrait of his wife, Ada, photographed for a Profile written by Calvin Tomkins.
Photograph by Gillian Laub for The New Yorker
A portrait of Astrid Holleeder from “How a Notorious Gangster Was Exposed by His Own Sister,” by Patrick Radden Keefe.
Photograph by Carla van de Puttelaar for The New Yorker
An ancient polychrome sculpture re-created from “The Myth of Whiteness in Classical Sculpture,” by Margaret Talbot.
Photograph by Mark Peckmezian for The New Yorker
A one-and-a-half-year-old Sussex spaniel named CH Tara’s N Primetime Dark Star Imperial Stout, who competed at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show at Madison Square Garden.
Photograph by Grant Cornett for The New Yorker
A photograph made for the short story “Foreign-Returned,” by Sadia Shepard.
Photograph by Farah Al Qasimi for The New Yorker
A conceptual photo illustration made for “The Story of a Trans Woman’s Face,” by Rebecca Mead.
Photograph by Natalie Krick for The New Yorker
Joanne Petit-Frère modelling her own creation that appeared in “Hair Wars” at MOMA PS1.
Photograph by Kwame Brathwaite for The New Yorker
The author Ottessa Moshfegh photographed for a Profile written by Ariel Levy
Photograph by Dru Donovan for The New Yorker
The soprano Gabriella Reyes de Ramírez, who was one headliner in a series of free concerts at the Metropolitan Opera.
Photograph by Paola Kudacki for The New Yorker
Tavi Gevinson and Roslyn Ruff starred in an adaptation of Carson McCullers’s “The Member of the Wedding” at Williamstown Theatre Festival.
Photograph by Matthew Tammaro for The New Yorker
Beto O’Rourke surrounded by supporters while campaigning for the U.S. Senate, in Texas.
Photographs by Bill McCullough for The New Yorker
A portrait of Earl Sweatshirt made for a music review written by Carrie Battan.
Photograph by Awol Erizku for The New Yorker
The Zimbabwean-born choreographer Nora Chipaumire, who performed at the Crossing the Line Festival, in October.
Photograph by Mamadi Doumbouya for The New Yorker
A photo illustration of Andy Clark, a philosopher and cognitive scientist at the University of Edinburgh, made for a story by Larissa MacFarquhar.
Photograph by Alma Haser for The New Yorker
A photograph made for the short story “I Walk Between the Raindrops,” by T. Coraghessan Boyle.
Photograph by William Mebane for The New Yorker
A photograph made for the short story “Chaunt,” by Joy Williams.
Photograph by Roger Ballen for The New Yorker
The memory-care unit in Ohio’s Chagrin Valley photographed for the report “The Comforting Fictions of Dementia Care,” by Larissa MacFarquhar.
Photograph by Philip Montgomery for The New Yorker
Seth Murrell, a child with autism, and his family, photographed for the report “Georgia’s Separate and Unequal Special-Education System,” by Rachel Aviv.
Photograph by LaToya Ruby Frazier for The New Yorker
The Reverend Dr. William Barber, a pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church, in Goldsboro, North Carolina, photographed for a story written by Jelani Cobb.
Photograph by Stefan Ruiz for The New Yorker
A nine-year-old boy from the Portfolio “Gun Country,” by Sharif Hamza, with text by Dana Goodyear.
Photograph by Sharif Hamza
A fourteen-year-old girl from the Portfolio “Gun Country,” by Sharif Hamza, with text by Dana Goodyear.
Photograph by Sharif Hamza
SpaceShipTwo, a sixty-foot craft, photographed for “Virgin Galactic’s Rocket Man,” by Nicholas Schmidle.
Photograph by Dan Winters for The New Yorker
The Woolsey Fire, near Los Angeles, seen from the West Hills, photographed for the article “How Extreme Weather Is Shrinking the Planet,” by Bill McKibben.
Photograph by Kevin Cooley for The New Yorker
Sourse: newyorker.com
