Over the past four decades, I鈥檝e had the great privilege of traveling on assignment for the Monitor to seven continents, 90 countries, and 49 states (sorry, North Dakota, I鈥檒l get to work on that!). At the start of my career, I sometimes felt like Dorothy in Oz 鈥� untethered from my regular life and overwhelmed by all that was new.
But something funny happened. The more unfamiliarity I saw, the less different it seemed. My goal, then as now, was to bring home photographs that told stories. And gradually, the images I made seemed less about how far away and exotic those locations are than about the people I met in them, people not so different from you and me, people whose hopes and dreams are powerfully similar to our own.
This year, as it happens, my favorite photos bear that out. They come from close to where I live 鈥� as close as next door 鈥� proving you don鈥檛 have to go far to make photographs that touch you. I was moved by neighbor girls enjoying juicy watermelon ... a new American citizen proudly pledging allegiance for the first time ... pig yoga, in which most participants had more fun petting piglets than doing the downward dog ... an old barn framed by fall leaves.
Beautiful things are all around us if we stay curious and keep looking 鈥� even in places we pass every day, even if we鈥檝e been around the world. Dorothy might have been right. Sometimes, there really is 鈥渘o place like home.鈥�
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The other photos that I loved in 2024 are below.
Click here to explore all of our favorite photos.