TIME’s Top 100 Photos of 2025 Reveal a Year of Emotion, Conflict, and Change
Dec 2, 2025
Dunja Đuđić
Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, concerts, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.
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TIME Magazine has released its annual list of the Top 100 Photos of the Year. This year has been… intense, so the image collection is nothing short of breathtaking. From conflict zones and political unrest to moments of joy, grief, resilience, and even humor, these images capture the full spectrum of human experience in 2025.
On the first glance this appears to be a fascinating underwater image of a green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas) but can you spot the hand print?
This award winning photo demonstrates a method for securing forensic evidence that can help to catch poachers and animal traffickers. Special fluorescent powder dyes, photographed under ultraviolet light, reveal hand and fingerprints, blood and other bodily fluids, gunpowder residue and other human traces.
Dr. Alexandra Thomas, wildlife crime and conservation training practitioner and Project Manager Louise Gibson, from the Wildlife Crime Forensic Lab at the Zoological Society of London, are developing such methods to assist law enforcement.
Six of the world’s seven sea turtle species are classified as threatened, endangered, or critically endangered due to human persecution, habitat destruction, or marine pollution.
“The moments photojournalists document tend to be most visible on faces,” TIME’s Karl Vick writes in the magazine’s introduction to the collection. “The panic of a fallen runner about to be spiked, the anguish in an immigrant in a headlock, a smiling Buddha toppled in a quake.” That emotional depth is evident in photos like the one by Carol Guzy, showing a tearful woman, her child, and even a security guard outside a federal building in New York, after ICE detained the woman’s husband.
[Related Reading: TIME Magazine’s 100 most influential photographs of all time]
A World on Edge
Many of the photos tell the story of a world in turmoil. In Myanmar, Buddhist monks sort through the rubble of a monastery destroyed by an earthquake. In Ukraine, a woman runs clutching her pets as bombs fall in Kharkiv. And in Texas, a rescue worker searches debris after deadly flash floods.
Protests also dominate the collection. From Istanbul, where a protester in a whirling dervish costume is hit with pepper spray, to Portland, where officers are swallowed in smoke during a tense ICE protest, the images show unrest not just in the streets, but in the hearts of people demanding change. Although not depicted in TIME’s top 100 collection for 2025, this year has been a year of change and massive protests in my country of Serbia, too.
A woman cooks in the shadows of a former orphanage while children move through adjoining rooms, now converted into living quarters for families displaced from Khartoum. The abandoned compound on the outskirts of Al Junaynah shelters dozens who fled Sudan’s civil war.
Glimpses of Peace Amid Chaos
Amid the chaos, there are also moments of celebration and resilience. Carlos Alcaraz stretches for a forehand on his way to winning the U.S. Open. Children play outside in New Jersey as part of a project encouraging independence over screen time. And on Oscar night, Conan O’Brien jokes on the red carpet, lying down in tuxedoed protest against glamour.
On the one hand, I love seeing the glimpses of hope, joy, and peace in the photos. After all, that’s what life is. Living through tough times or even a collective trauma, each of us still are still trying to make space for even the small flickers of hope, happiness, and peace. But on the other hand, seeing the glamour and carefree grins of billionaires and politicians while he world’s falling apart… This contrast makes me mad – not just when looking at photos illustrating it.
On the night of Saturday, March 15, three planes touched down in El Salvador, carrying 261 men deported from the United States. A few dozen were Salvadoran, but most of the men were Venezuelans the Trump Administration had designated as gang members and deported, with little or no due process.
Facing the Future
Artificial intelligence and humanoid robots also appear in the roundup. “Robots (in a footrace, at a bedside) serve as comic relief partly because they have no faces,” Vick notes, reflecting on their place in a year full of deeply human struggle and emotion. I’m not sure what to think about it considering how lonely we already are. But that’s the topic for another time.
“We stand at scenic overlooks and lift our lens to capture a postcard view that, of course, looks better on a postcard,” Vick reflects.
“It’s not about gear, or the 10,000 hours. It’s simply that almost any photograph is improved by having people in it—a lesson TIME’s Top 100 Photographs of 2025 underscores in images that capture not only a year, but also the faint but discernible shadow cast by a less human future.”
These are not just snapshots of events. They are mirrors held up to the world, reminding us of what we faced, how we changed, and who we became in 2025. And not sure if I’m excited or terrified about what the future holds. Probably both.
Take a look at the full collection here and brace yourself for smiles, tears, and a wide range of emotions.
Dunja Đuđić
Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, concerts, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.
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