Images of the pandemic year show how people in New York, across the U.S. and around the world experienced shutdown, quarantine and the slivers of hope that emerged with the introduction of COVID-19 vaccines.
Along the way, mask-wearing and other prevention practices became politicized, protests against police killings rang out nationwide and Americans voted by a variety of means in an historic presidential election.
NYCity News Service journalists captured these scenes month by month, from March to March.
MARCH 2020 Michaela Román, who was living in Brooklyn when New York City shut down, captured the empty seats aboard the flight she took to return to her family in El Paso, Texas.
APRIL 2020 Jesse Vad found himself largely confined to his bedroom in Queens, which became the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak. Pasta and broccoli became one of his typical meals during lockdown.
MAY 2020 Olivia Bensimon photographed protesters during a moment of silence at a “Justice for George Floyd” event in Manhattan’s Foley Square, historically the site of many demonstrations against injustice.
JUNE 2020 Leonardo March focused on a participant at a Black Lives Matter protest in Brooklyn. Masks became a necessary accessory at crowded demonstrations.
JULY 2020 Benjamin Chambers found William Cottis, 24, Jean Baptiste Bolh, 22, and Sebastian Bolh, 22, from Burlington, Vermont, at Phelps Mountain in New York’s Adirondacks, where they sought relief from lockdown confinement.
AUGUST 2020 Jacob Schermerhorn saw protestors gathered outside the Henrietta, N.Y., post office after reports of sorting machines being removed and postal employees not receiving overtime pay prompted fear that the Trump administration was seeking to block mail-in voting.
SEPTEMBER 2020 Violetta Nespolo, who returned to Italy from New York when the city shut down, showed how a tram rider in Milan sought to protect herself from the virus.
OCTOBER 2020 Aaron Tremper photographed the socially distanced line outside the Boys and Girls Club in Astoria, Queens on a Sunday, an early voting site for the Nov. 3 presidential election.
NOVEMBER 2020 Zachary Smith shot this graffiti message railing against pandemic restrictions in Bath Beach, Brooklyn.
DECEMBER 2020 Connor Zaft discovered what once would have been a rare scene at the Woodlawn subway station in the Bronx: An empty 4 train.
FEBRUARY 2021 Natalie Peart captured the buildup of a windrow pile at the Phoenix Community Garden in Ocean Hill, Brooklyn, where Rachel Mahon poured food scraps.
MARCH 2021 Aliyah Walker accompanied her father, Vernon, when he received his first dose of the Pfizer vaccine at a drive-through center in Stamford, Connecticut.
Photo editor Leonardo March
