Wildfires light up a hillside behind the Bidwell Bar Bridge on 9 September 2020, as the Bear Fire burns in Oroville, California, in this photo taken with a slow shutter speed. Photo: Noah Berger / AP Photo
Wildfires light up a hillside behind the Bidwell Bar Bridge on 9 September 2020, as the Bear Fire burns in Oroville, California, in this photo taken with a slow shutter speed. Photo: Noah Berger / AP Photo

By Jerry Schwartz
1 December 2020

(AP) – Behold, a world in distress:

A 64-year-old woman weeps, hugging her husband as he lay dying in the COVID-19 unit of a California hospital. A crowded refugee camp in Lesbos, Greece, engulfed in flames, disgorges a string of migrants fleeing this hell on Earth. Rain-swept protesters, enraged by the death of George Floyd in police custody, rail against the system and the heavens.

This is the world that Associated Press photographers captured in 2020, a world beset by every sort of catastrophe — natural and unnatural disaster, violent and non-violent conflict.

And, in every corner of that world, the coronavirus.

Francisco Espana looks at the Mediterranean sea from a promenade next to the Hospital del Mar in Barcelona, Spain, on 4 September 2020. After 52 days in the hospital’s intensive care unit due to the coronavirus, Francisco was allowed by his doctors to spend almost ten minutes at the seaside as part of his recovery therapy. Photo: Emilio Morenatti / AP Photo
Francisco Espana looks at the Mediterranean sea from a promenade next to the Hospital del Mar in Barcelona, Spain, on 4 September 2020. After 52 days in the hospital’s intensive care unit due to the coronavirus, Francisco was allowed by his doctors to spend almost ten minutes at the seaside as part of his recovery therapy. Photo: Emilio Morenatti / AP Photo

There are the living: Women cover themselves head to toe with chadors, protective clothing and gas masks to prepare a body for burial in Iran. An octogenarian couple kiss through plastic in Spain.

There are the dead: Relatives, traveling by night and by boat, travel down a Peruvian river to bring a body home for burial. Row upon row of new graves are dug in the largest cemetery in Latin America. [more]

In 2020, AP photographers captured a world in distress