2020

2020 looks at one of the most climactic years in United States history through the eyes of an award-winning photographer, and marks the culmination of many themes in van Agtmael’s ongoing work on American power and ideology in the post-9/11 world. Unfolding chronologically, the booklet brings a momentous year vividly to life.

Beginning on Jan. 1, a year like no other in memory unfolds with photos of COVID-19 in New York City, lockdown ‘rebellions’, the Black Lives Matter movement in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the rise of dangerous militias, Trump’s populist base, election night in the White House, and wraps with the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6 and Biden’s swearing-in a few weeks later. Diary entries accompany many pictures, and can be read as a first draft record of history – ominous, vulnerable, angry and sometimes surreal. Intimate in size and inexpensively produced, this comprehensive and personal photographic account of the unparalleled events of 2020 is a record of a year none will—or can—forget.