The Best Pictures of the Year

By James Kelly/Managing Editor

How do you go about picking the best photographs of 2002? For starters, you agree with your colleagues that the task is impossible, that you would need hundreds of pages to do the task justice, and that even experts on photography disagree on what makes a great picture. Then you cheerfully ignore all those points and ask your colleagues to look through thousands of pictures anyway and pick the several hundred they like best. Then you sit around at a table with them for hours debating the merits of dozens. And at the end of all that, you have the issue you are now holding: 56 pages of extraordinary images, evoking the events and emotions of 2002.

This is the first time we have devoted an entire issue to photography, and the idea came from all of you who have told us how much you love the pictures in TIME. We divided the photographs into four groups: A Year of Conflict, covering the violent ways of humankind; The Natural World, displaying nature in all its guises; The Human Spirit, depicting the will to prevail and excel; and finally People, showing the very well known or the suddenly famous on the stage and off. Not all the images are pretty; we live in uneasy times, and some of our best photography captures that suffering. But we did try for a mix that also reflects the hope, joy and wonder of being alive in 2002.

My thanks to Michael Elliott, who oversaw the project, and to Jay Colton, Cynthia Hoffman, MaryAnne Golon, Michele Stephenson, Arthur Hochstein, Victoria Rainert, Michele Orecklin, Josh Tyrangiel, Lev Grossman and Jodie Morse. My deepest gratitude goes to the photographers, many of whom risked their lives to take these pictures and all of whom have the gift for capturing the memorable moment.

James Kelly, Managing Editor