ON THE COVER
The 2021 “Year in Pictures” issue, our second, feels very different from the first. Many people have called 2020 their most challenging year ever: a pandemic worldwide, racial and political strife in the United States. Yet well into 2021, problems of all kinds persisted; the political rancor and climate crisis did not abate. On the other hand, vaccines and other medical advances, along with behavioral shifts, began to rein in the virus and raise spirits. You’ll see that glint of optimism reflected in many of the photographs we chose to represent this whipsaw year. Yet as we looked through the more than 1.9 million images added to National Geographic’s archives in 2021, we couldn’t settle on one photo that captured the year. So we created four covers, each reflecting a major…