Playing by the year: 2024 in pictures

The best of photographs from 2024, curated by The Hindu Photo Editor Dinesh Krishnan

Grief and trepidation suffuse the year-end stock-taking. As 2024 winds down to a close, three stalwarts of India passed away in its final days, making the world poorer. Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, author M.T. Vasudevan Nair, and filmmaker Shyam Benegal, all of whom touched the lives of everyday Indians in their own way, departed.

Meanwhile, the camera continues to record everything that comes in its way, and without bias: here is a curation of how photographers have responded to events as they enveloped them. They bore witness to erratic weather, disasters, elections, election promises, victories and defeats. Somewhere, a new temple rose in an old temple town; wars never seem to end, no matter what the chatter, and children getting the worst of it, like in any conflict; international sporting events threw up climaxes and anti-climaxes; catastrophes, both manmade and natural, altered lives forever; an all-woman cinema team won international acclaim; and in a split-second moment a former President escaped a bullet, days before he got elected to office, again.

And the camera continues to bear witness.