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From praying monks to diving swimmers, meteor showers and the tomb of Pope Francis, here are 11 of the most striking and memorable images of the year so far.
1. Monks at prayer, Thailand
Photo credit, Guillaume Payen/Anadolu via Getty Images
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A photo of monks praying beneath the vast golden dome of Wat Phra Dhammakaya during the annual Makha Bucha ceremony in February is striking in its ethereal glow.
Tens of thousands of monks and worshipers, many carrying lanterns, gather to commemorate the Buddha's first great teaching.
Its unreal brilliance evokes the contours of a 19th century Burmese manuscript depicting the Buddha's first sermon in the Deer Park, where monks and animals crowd around his radiant silhouette.
These two images capture the devotion of communities determined to honor and transform.
2. Water parade, Venice
Photo credit, Stefano Mazzola/Getty Images
Photos of a giant papier-mâché rat, which threw confetti and glided down the Grand Canal during the aquatic parade that traditionally opens the Venice Carnival in February, immortalized the scene in a burst of bright colors.
Rod turned spectacle, the floating “Pantegana” imaginatively emerges from the city sewers as an emblem of Venice’s comic side.
With its bursts of color, the rat offers a grotesque and brilliant contrast to the elegant veil of light that envelops Venice in countless paintings, such as Entrance to the Grand Canal, by neo-impressionist Paul Signac, dating from 1905.
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In both images, Venice dissolves into a mosaic of pixelated light.
3. Tomb of Pope Francis, Rome
Photo credit, Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
A photo taken in April of Pope Francis' tomb in Rome — the first burial of a pontiff outside the Vatican in more than a century — on which a solitary white rose was placed, proved extremely evocative.
The austere stone slab seems to tremble in the dim light of the crypt.
The photo's transcription of eloquent gloom evokes the atmosphere of a 1798 drawing by JMW Turner of Cardinal Morton's tomb in Canterbury Cathedral.
Turner's graphite drawing on paper seems lit by an ever-deepening inner glow, toward which our eyes find their way, petal by petal. Both images see stone, like death, as permeable, unfinished.
4. Migrant worker, Chandigarh, India
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There is something inevitably archetypal about this photo taken in April of a migrant worker stopping to drink water while harvesting wheat on the outskirts of Chandigarh, India.
The worker's cup and sickle, held aloft, gleaming in the golden light of the grain, evoke the iconic figure of the solitary harvester in Winslow Homer's 1865 "The Veteran in a New Field."
In Homer's work, a Union veteran wields a scythe in a sea of wheat, in a fable about the national reckoning after the American Civil War.
Both pictures place their protagonists between allegory and labor, reaping not only the grain, but also the lasting promise of renewal.
5. Robotic hand, Beijing
Photo credit, Pedro Pardo/AFP/Getty Images
The image of a young woman reaching out to touch the slowly opening index finger of a huge robotic hand was taken during a press visit to Beijing's Robot World in April.
The photo's dramatic lighting and the figure's black clothing help to reduce the sense of human presence to mere flashes of flesh: floating forearms and a small profile suspended in the darkness.
At first glance, this close contact might bring to mind Michelangelo's “The Creation of Adam,” or perhaps, better still, M. C. Escher's enigmatic drawing of hands drawing hands (1948).
In the age of AI, the line between creator and creation is increasingly difficult to draw.
6. Transit Center, Buganda
Photo credit, Luis Tato/AFP/Getty Images
The photo of a Congolese refugee sitting on a swing at a transit center near Buganda in May radiates a joy that transcends the material discomforts she witnesses: the incessant rain, the rusting steel structure of the abandoned playground, and the broken seat that dangles next to her.
This woman, who is one of more than 70,000 people who have crossed the Burundian border since January, displays morale that defies difficult circumstances.
By placing the photo next to the famous painting “The Swing” (1767) by French Rococo artist Jean-Honoré Fragonard, it strips itself of the courtly frivolity of the famous work, reclaiming the swing as a timeless element of joy and inner peace, suspended outside of space and time.
7. Meteor shower, Inverness, California
Photo credit, Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images
A photograph capturing the Eta Aquarids shower of shooting stars as it crossed the night sky above Inverness, California, at dawn on May 6 was both inspiring and humbling.
Overshadowed by the fuzzy glow of the Milky Way above it, the glow of a small village appears to be little more than a flickering footnote in a vast cosmic drama.
The stark contrast between the human scale and the celestial scale recalls Adam Elsheimer's groundbreaking painting, "The Flight into Egypt" (c. 1609), famous for its pioneering astronomical precision.
In Elsheimer's work, the Holy Family occupies only a fraction of the foreground, while the gaze rises toward the immense night sky. These two images, separated by several centuries, testify not only to contemporary progress in optics, but also to the longevity of wonder.
8. Eyes covered in oil, London
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With her eyes covered in a creamy, oily substance, an activist from the direct action group Fossil Free London stood outside the offices of energy company Shell in May.
Shell's sale of its onshore oil assets in Nigeria — a move protesters say allows it to escape responsibility for accidents in the Niger Delta — sparked the protest.
The company denies wrongdoing. The blindfolded pose evokes George Frederic Watts' 1886 symbolist painting “Hope,” in which a woman, eyes covered, sits on a blurry globe, playing a plaintive lyre.
9. Underwater swimmer, Singapore
An almost immersive, water-level photo of Chinese swimmer Tianchen Lan, competing in an open water relay at the World Aquatics Championships in Singapore on July 20, freezes the athlete mid-jump as he launches from an ultra-marine diving board.
The bold convergence of blues (sky, water, and platform) and the striking suspension of the athlete's body evoke seemingly disparate aspects of French conceptual artist Yves Klein's imagination: his 1957 creation of a singularly intense hue, Klein International Blue, and his 1960 photomontage “Leap into the Void.”
The latter creates the illusion of his body falling dangerously from a Parisian roof into the street, like the Singapore photo, presenting the body and the void as a whole.
10. Ballet students, Tembisa, South Africa
Photo credit, Phill Magakoe/AFP/Getty Images
A photo taken last July outside a dance academy in Tembisa, South Africa, showing two 5-year-old ballet students, Philasande Ngcobo and Yamihle Gwababa, is both striking and moving.
The stark contrast between the parched soil, chiselled shadow, and delicate dresses evokes the rigorous aesthetic angles of Degas's countless scenes of rehearsing dancers.
Fixing his gaze on the serious gestures of his dancers, Degas often abstracted the dance studies into bands of white color, giving his paintings, like the photo taken in the suburbs of Johannesburg, a timeless dimension.
11. Malnourished child, Gaza City
Photo credit, Getty Images
A series of heartbreaking images showing emaciated children cradled in their mothers' arms in Gaza in July shocked the world.
According to UN-backed experts, the worst possible scenario, a famine, is currently occurring in Gaza.
While art history is replete with images of mothers comforting their afflicted children, from Dutch artist Gabriël Metsu's "The Sick Child" (1665) to Pablo Picasso's "Disinherited" (1903), the photos taken in Gaza have no equivalent in painting or sculpture.
No visual invention of suffering or compassion, made by any artist, no matter how talented or revered, can adequately capture the magnitude of the unfathomable distress reflected in these recent photos.
*This is an adaptation of an article originally published in English by BBC Culture. To access the original text, click here.
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