The Best Pictures of the Year

A war year, an election year. That must mean big numbers: voting blocs, body counts. But numbers numb, allowing easy generalizations of the Other. Instead, read these images; they humanize the abstract. "The Army" is revealed as young folks far from home, and "Iraqis" as 24 million individuals, some grateful to these young folks, others intent on killing them. In pictures of an athlete, a candidate, orphan kids who find a reason to smile, there is no They--only people who, when a gifted photographer catches them in a moment of their lives, sometimes add up to We. What follows are snapshots of our collective soul in 2004.