But 2021 was also laced with the hope of new opportunities to travel. We were taken from Jamie Hawkesworth’s rolling British hills to Stephen Galdieu’s hidden glimpses of North Korea, and Maxime Guyon blasted us sky-high with his project on aeronautics. But with the whiplash sustained from being stuck in lockdown to considering the prospect of international travel, readers looked to the comfort of nostalgic photography. We revisited the noughties with Ewan Spencer’s iconic photos of the Skins cast; and Annie Wang showed us her 21-year-long project on motherhood. One thing has been made clear from this year’s photography highlights and this is a resounding affirmation of our readers’ love for man’s best friend, with Daniel Gebhart de Koekkoek’s doggy calendar making a last-minute leap into the charts as one of our most popular photography articles this year.
The fresh lockdowns of 2021 were met with resilience and ingenuity by the photographers featured on this year’s list of our top articles. Paula Zucotti cast a new light on the everyday objects that kept us going through weeks of entrapment, Conor Cunningham conducted shoots over Zoom, and we marked a year of trials and tribulations with our top 10 photographs of the pandemic.