2019 saw Guardian US pass through some extraordinary territory. Our reporting took us to a variety of places and situations, from a besieged abortion clinic in Alabama to an indigenous community in northern California practicing prescribed burning. For each one of these stories, we worked with a crew of immensely talented and resourceful photographers – diligent journalists who treated each story with care, making images that provide a stunning view of this year.
Young people play basketball on a summer’s afternoon in Webster Springs, West Virginia. Photographer Matt Eich and poet Doug Van Gundy collaborated to create a series of photographs and poems of this often-stereotyped region of America. Photograph by Matt Eich/EHRP and the Guardian
Left: Stacey Abrams poses for a portrait for an interview with Guardian US where she spoke about voter suppression in America. Photograph by Peyton Fulford/The Guardian. Right: Stella Grossenbacher, nine, and Danielle Rembert, 48, pose for a portrait at the Climate Strike protest in New York, part of a worldwide day of protests to bring attention to climate change.
Elana Bolds shouts out gunshot noises and children run during one of the many active shooter drills she conducts in the Crescent Park neighborhood of Richmond, California. Photograph by Jason Henry/The Guardian.
Brianna Wu is a video game producer who became caught up in GamerGate, the conspiracy theory that falsely claimed women were getting ahead in the gaming industry by having sexual relationships with journalists covering their products. She received more than 300 death threats and is now running for Congress to try to tackle harassment online. Wu was one of the five people we spoke to who have had their lives upended by conspiracy theories. Photograph by Ali Smith/The Guardian
Left: Ashley Mayfaire, 35, a non-binary person, and Morgan Mayfaire, 60, a trans man, are parents to a ‘haus’ of adult kids in Miami. Both were interviewed for our photo essay on ‘The new American family’. Photograph by Maria Alejandra Cardona/The Guardian. Right: Santi Ceballos outside their home in Tucson. Santi worked to change Arizona’s curriculum laws that focused sex education on heterosexuality. Photograph by Cassidy Araiza/The Guardian
Phillip Mangus, a retired farmer from Indiana, and George Lane, a lifelong nudist from Indianapolis, read scripture during a small service at the Garden of Eden church on Sunday at the Lake Como co-op nudist community in Lutz, Florida. Photograph by Zack Wittman/The Guardian
Members of the junior high basketball team watch a game at Miami independent school district, the only school in Roberts county, Texas. Ninety-five percent of voters here backed Donald Trump in the 2016 election, the highest margin of any county in America. Photograph by Misty Keasler/Redux/The Guardian
Bryce Thomas helps his mother Shakima wash the dishes at their home in Newark, New Jersey. They have to use bottled water and a water filter at home after contamination in people’s homes was revealed by environmentalists. Photograph by Krisanne Johnson/The Guardian
John Boyd Jr, at his 210-acre farm in Baskerville, Virginia. Boyd is a fourth-generation farmer, still fighting for black farmers’ rights and equal treatment. Photograph by Greg Kahn/The Guardian
Midwife Rebecca Polston watches Em’Mae Alexander labor with the support of her mother, Tulani Alexander and her doula, Lakesha Gordon at Roots Community Birth Center. Polston is Minnesota’s only black-identifying certified professional midwife, and she is trying to change the high infant mortality rates for African American babies through culturally focused care. Photograph by Alice Proujansky/The Guardian
Left: Rose Strauss, a member of the Sunrise Movement, poses for a portrait in San Anselmo, California. Despite being barely two years old, the Sunrise Movement has outpaced established environmental groups in the push to radically reshape the political landscape around climate change. Photograph by Alex Welsh/The Guardian. Right: Rajni and daughter Lucienne. Photographer Shaniqwa Jarvis captured the variety in skin tone across all black women, and also between mothers and daughters, for our series on colorism. Photograph by Shaniqwa Jarvis/The Guardian
Jim Fouratt, right, with his partner Joel, at their apartment in Manhattan. Fouratt moved to his apartment in 1969, the year that the Stonewall riot took place. Photograph by Gioncarlo Valentine/The Guardian
Maya Bass, a doctor of family medicine, stands for a portrait in Fairmount Park in Philadelphia. Dr Bass travels to Oklahoma once a month to perform abortions at a clinic she previously worked at. Photograph by Michelle Gustafson/The Guardian
A pregnancy sac at six to eight weeks. Nationwide, many bills have outlawed abortion at the time of heartbeat which is within that time frame. This photograph was made in an area in Alabama where this procedure would not be possible without a doctor who commutes regularly from New England. Photograph by Glenna Gordon/The Guardian
Left: Vicky and Scott in midtown New York. They are part of a community that has lived in the tunnels below Hudson Yards for many years. Right: Rob Staskiewicz, a veteran who also lives in the shadows of the new development, presses on the soft spot in the side of his head that resulted from a fight in which he fractured his skull. Photographs by George Etheredge/The Guardian
A mural of Oakland rapper The Jacka is painted on the side of a building where he was fatally shot by an unidentified gunman on 2 February, 2015. Since then, gun violence has declined in the area and a report by the Guardian looked into how that happened. Photograph by Tim Hussin/The Guardian
A murmur of red-winged blackbirds passes over a PVID irrigation ditch in Blythe, California. Blythe is home to many alfafa bales – almost all of which are shipped to Saudi Arabia as it continues to buy land in the United States. Photograph by Trent Davis Bailey/The Guardian
Backwater flooding surrounds Pleasant Grove Baptist church in Issaquena county, Mississippi. About 550,000 acres of land have been underwater in the rural Yazoo backwater area of the lower Mississippi delta since this February. The results have been devastating. Photograph by Rory Doyle for the Guardian
