The skateboarders of Bolivia's Imilla Skate do their heel flips and backslides in polleras — colorful, layered skirts worn by the country's Indigenous Aymara and Quechua population. "By skating in polleras, we want to show that girls and women can do anything, no matter how you look or how people see you," says Daniela Santiváñez, who founded the group with two friends in 2019.
A picture, they say, is worth 1,000 words. So we will try to use as few words as possible in this introduction to a sampling of our favorite photo posts of 2024.
This year's round up includes dramatic drone images of the world's "foodscapes," an intimate look at families striving to provide healthy meals for their kids and exuberant Bolivian women skateboarding in their traditional bowler hats.
Sope Adelaja for NPR /
Toyin feeds her 3-year-old daughter, Kudirat, while her husband, Saheed, tends to their other two children.
At a one-day workshop run by the Care School for Men in Bogotá, Colombia, male medical students at Sanitas University learn how to cradle a baby. This class of participants consists of medical students, but the usual enrollees are dads of all types.
Paramedic Papinki Lebelo waits for a police escort before responding to an emergency call-out a Cape Town neighborhood. Due to a rise in attacks on paramedics, ambulance crews in large parts of the city will only go out when they have a police escort.
The African nation of Mauritania was a land of pastoral nomads when it gained independence from France in 1960, but it has since become a nation of fishermen as well, with hundreds of pirogues lining the beach of the capital of Nouakchott.
Ben de la Cruz is an award-winning documentary video producer and multimedia journalist. He is currently a senior visuals editor. In addition to overseeing the multimedia coverage of NPR's global health and development, his responsibilities include working on news products for emerging platforms including Amazon's and Google's smart screens. He is also part of a team developing a new way of thinking about how NPR can collaborate and engage with our audience as well as photographers, filmmakers, illustrators, animators, and graphic designers to build new visual storytelling avenues on NPR's website, social media platforms, and through live events.
Days of heavy monsoon rain has caused rivers, including the Brahmaputra, to overflow, inundating communities, disrupting livelihoods and damaging infrastructure.
A new report has revealed decades of alleged abuse at an elite art school. NPR spoke with one of the victims. And, Iran is playing the long game with negotiations, which could impact midterms.
Medicaid will have new work requirements next year. But some people with disabilities, who already work, say they'd like to work more, but risk losing their Medicaid coverage if they earn too much.
As Iran works toward a final agreement with Oman to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, leaders there have a political incentive to drag out negotiations: their desire to put pressure on President Trump.
NPR's A Martinez speaks to Holly Dagres, senior fellow at the Washington Institute, about how the Iranian regime's understanding of U.S. politics informs its war strategy.
