A farewell to 2021 from us here at Post Reports and the photojournalists who witnessed the year’s biggest stories.

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The Washington Post photography editors combed through thousands of images to find the most memorable from 2021. Accompanying the photos this year are interviews with the photojournalists who took them. The team at Post Reports felt inspired by the interviews and images to look back on the past year.

The images of 2021 tell a complex yet dramatic story. It was a year of the angry and the rebellious scaling walls, tearing down barriers, rising up to reverse reality. But it was also a year of carefully considered verdicts and hurriedly ended war, of mass migration and candlelight vigils, a year when millions of people decided to take a shot, venture forth and return to life, together.

There was, perhaps above all, the terror of lethal disease, a second year of a pandemic that unraveled the fabric of daily life and managed to set people against each other in ways that defied reason. The usual questions born of insecurity — Will we be okay? How can we help each other? — were joined by new uncertainties: Is this real? What should I believe? Why don’t people around me believe what I see is true?

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