A glance back at 2020 in pictures

Nancy and Brian Allen stand in front of their home in New South Wales, Australia, against a backdrop of ash and smoke from the nearby bush fires and an orange-red sky. Wildfires raged in Australia for the first months of the year; 34 people died and an area the size of the Republic of Ireland is thought to have burned. This natural disaster provided some of the most striking images of 2020.

Cetin Gültekin remembers his brother Gökhan, aged 37, who was killed in a racist attack in Hanau, along with eight others. The perpetrator later killed himself and his mother. An artist collective painted this 27-meter-long mural to commemorate the victims.

This picture also made waves. At a Black Lives Matter protest in London, Patrick Hutchinson brought an injured far-right counter-protester to safety. His act of humanity was celebrated on social media. Hutchinson was originally there to protect young Black protesters from getting caught up in violence.

Bearing a phone for a torch, this young woman joined a protest outside the Belarusian Embassy in Warsaw to express her solidarity with the opposition after the disputed presidential election in Belarus.

In August, a devastating explosion killed over 200 people in Beirut and left many more homeless, including the musician Raymond Essayan who also suffered concussion. He pieced together a piano from the rubble for a music video that then went viral.

This image of US President Donald Trump holding a bible in front of St John’s Church in Washington DC was supposed to win over his supporters among evangelical Christians. Just before, peaceful protests had been dispersed with tear gas to clear the president’s path to the church — leading many to call Trump out for hypocrisy.

Joseph Varon was treating patients at a COVID-19 station in Texas when he encountered this distraught elderly man. Varon asked him why he was crying, he later told the media: "And the man says, 'I want to be with my wife.' So, I just grab him and I hold him." The man wasn’t allowed any visitors, even at Thanksgiving.

No, this is not an optical illusion. This subway train had derailed when it was saved by a sculpture of a giant whale. There were no passengers on board and nobody was injured in this spectacular accident in the Netherlands in November.

Alicia Keys dressed up almost like a cyborg for her virtual performance at this year’s MTV Europe Music Awards, which took place online because of the pandemic. She only revealed her identity towards the end of her act, one of the most popular of the event.

Dana Clark stood in line for hours with her 18-month-old son in front of city hall in New Orleans to vote in this year’s US presidential election. The teacher said that she wanted to protect her son, herself and her pupils because she wasn’t sure how many people would be wearing masks.

Residents of the ancestral village of US Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, Joe Biden’s running mate in this year’s election, pray for a Democratic victory. Harris’ maternal grandfather grew up in Thulasendrapuram in the state of Tamil Nadu in southern India.

This year, Santa Claus greeted kids at the Aalborg Zoo in Denmark from within a huge snow globe, to protect himself and them from the coronavirus. The holidays will be different this year, for parents and children alike.