This year has seemed to belong to one person: Donald Trump. So it is fitting that the first picture here focuses vertiginously on him, as he waits in the Capitol rotunda on Inauguration Day to unleash turmoil on the world once again. The face he presents to the camera often looks benign: comforting the widow of his ally Charlie Kirk; looking studiously bored, rather than aggressive, at his dressing-down of Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office. It is the photographs of his America, especially the helmeted ranks of ICE agents, that show his most troubling achievement: the coarsening and dividing of a once-inspiring democracy. In perhaps the most revealing shot of him, he stands casually in a MAGA baseball cap admiring a wire enclosure in which migrants facing deportation will be kept. 

Around him, the world grows more unruly. Wars rage in the Middle East, Sudan and Ukraine. The agony of Gaza is especially harrowing: desperate, scrawny people wave empty bowls. In Ukraine, nets are spread between tall trees to frustrate attacks by drones. On all sides, flags are waved and worn: crowds turn out for funerals in Iran, but also for far-right rallies in London. Israelis torn between grief and jubilation watch on screens the return of hostages held by Hamas. In one heart-wrenching photo, a migrant family knee-deep in the English Channel watches in quiet despair as a dinghy departs without them.