It is time to explore not merely the “Best Pictures of the Week” but the “Best Pictures of the Year.”  I spent some time yesterday looking at NBC News’ rendition of the best news photographs of the year, and got to revisit all of the miserable news of the year.  Things do appear to be going to hell “in a hand basket!” What can I tell you. The only good news images seem to involve baby pandas and sports competitions.

A couple of these photographs are really worth mentioning from a photographic view point.  Case in point is the haunting photograph by Justin Sullivan from Getty Images of a protester at a demonstration in Ferguson, Missouri. “Black Lives Matter.” The bright outline of the shadowy figure and the way in which the police cruiser’s lights seem to pass right through him, confirms the fact that this is truly Ellison’s “Invisible Man.”  He is there, but we see through him and are left to wonder whether it is really possible, a hundred and fifty years after emancipation to still live in so dichotomous a society.