Editorial The Year in Review

While the first few months of the year saw the biggest names in local talent returning to home soil to cover the worst bushfire season in recent history, this disaster quickly segued into the COVID-19 outbreak — a phenomenon that would prove at once the biggest talking point for reportage, journalism, and documentary photography, but also the single biggest source of income loss for photographers, and the publishing industry, in a single year. While 2020 will undoubtedly be remembered as a year that most choose to try and forget, it will also be remembered as a year that changed the face of photojournalism and editorial photography forever. From street photography in New York City to the remotest of islands of Southern Australia, a complex web of issues has united photographers across the globe to band together during a global pandemic and say in unison; “OK, now what?”

Fanning the flames

Without doubt, the global COVID-19 pandemic will be noted in history as an event that impacted the lives of almost all Australians. But certainly, the history books will also note the disastrous fire season that prefixed the pandemic outbreak in this country – one of the worst on record, and with unprecedented