The resilience of the human spirit captured in 29 stunning images

2021 was a tumultuous year—but National Geographic photographers still documented moments of perseverance.

Efforts to vaccinate people and reduce the risk of COVID-19 meant some could finally take off the mask and gather with loved ones in 2021. Meanwhile, many other significant moments took place across the globe, like graduations, performances, and quinceañeras. National Geographic photographers documented the resilience and persistence of the human spirit in one of the toughest years in modern history.
Photos Curated ByMallory Benedict
Text ByEmily Martin
December 7, 2021
15 min read

For nearly two years, faces have been partially obscured by a protective mask as the COVID-19 pandemic rages around the world.

The virus has continued to mutate and spread while some corners of the world remain largely unvaccinated. A new reality set in during 2021, forcing governments and societies to adapt in the way they lived and operated.

And yet, widespread efforts to vaccinate people and reduce the risk of COVID-19 meant some people felt they could finally take off the mask and gather with loved ones for holidays and other events. Meanwhile, Earth’s inhabitants witnessed many other significant moments—from an end to U.S. military presence in Afghanistan to bold environmental initiatives in Colombia, the most dangerous country in which to be an environmental leader, according to the human rights group Global Witness.

Throughout one of the toughest years in modern history, National Geographic photographers documented the resilience and persistence of the human spirit.

There was no shortage of inhumanity and grief. An uptick in hate crimes against the Asian American community prompted some soul-searching and reflections on identity. The pandemic, of course, claimed the lives of an astounding number of people. And many are still suffering as new deaths continue to climb while the weight of grief was compounded for those in long-term care. 

Still, the determination of hope breaks through the despair. In El Salvador, women joined forces to fight chronic water shortages. Across the United States, students who had endured lockdowns were able to celebrate graduations. And though racial reckoning issues remain far from settled, finally some people who had long raised their voices felt their cry for justice had been heard.

Through the tumult, 2021 brought closure and a sense of peace for some, including descendants of Indigenous Lakota children who were among 10,000 Native American youth placed in a boarding school far from home more than a century ago. Cruel mistreatment that tried to strip the youngsters of their birthright stayed hidden for decades but the skeletal remains of nine of those Lakota youth are now back on ancestral lands.

These are the moments in 2021 when the human spirit prevailed.

Dangerous work as an environmental leader

an Indigenous woman does a ceremony with water in Colombia
Ati Quigua, from the Indigenous Arhuaco community, performs a ritual to protect a river in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains in Cesar, Colombia. An environmentalist politician, she has protested mining and megaprojects that threaten natural resources in the Sierra Nevada, a UNESCO biosphere reserve. Colombia is the most dangerous country to be an environmental leader, according to human rights group Global Witness; many environmental leaders face threats on their life, and 160 leaders have been killed so far this year. Nevertheless, leaders like Quigua continue their work to protect the land, its resources, and those who live on it.
Photograph by Florence Goupil

A band of water defenders fights chronic shortages

a woman bathes her son using a bucket outside in El Salvador
Four-year-old Steven Portillo receives an outdoor bath at his home in Caña Brava, a rural section of the Santo Tomás municipality in El Salvador where there isn't any indoor plumbing. In recent years, women from Santo Tomás have become an unlikely band of water defenders, organizing to fight water shortages in El Salvador. Mostly mothers in their 40s and 50s, these women aren’t afraid of confronting officials, waiving picket signs, or coordinating phone and social media campaigns.
Photograph by Ana María Arevalo Gosen

American racial justice remains a work in progress

people react after hearing the guilty verdict of former police officer Derek Chauvin
People react after hearing the guilty verdict of former police officer Derek Chauvin at George Floyd Square in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The verdict comes nearly a year after George Floyd’s death on May 25, 2020, which sparked an international outcry against police brutality. Floyd became the symbol of a movement to end the abuse of law enforcement and establishment power; it broadened into a call for racial reckoning including the taking down of Confederate statues and other remnants of a colonialist past.
Photograph by David Guttenfelder

What belonging means for Asian Americans

an Asian American woman poses for a portrait with her daughter in her daughter's bedroom
DD Lee, who moved to the U.S. from China at age 12, sits with her daughter, Isabelle, at their home in Woodstock, Georgia. DD was one of many Atlantans who shared a story about their name, and how it represented a fundamental question of how to balance fitting in with holding onto their families’ culture. DD, who abbreviates the initials of her Chinese name, Dan Dan, teaches Isabelle to be proud of both parts of her heritage.
Photograph by Haruka Sakaguchi
an Asian American woman poses for a portrait with her father in their home
Loan Tran, right, and her siblings cried the first few months their parents moved them from a tight-knit Vietnamese community in Massachusetts to rural Georgia, where her dad, Dung, left, runs a chicken farm. Both of her parents fled the Vietnam War. Loan and her father were asked to share their intergenerational perspectives on belonging in America alongside other Asian American families. “Belonging to me means having a place in the world and feeling included,” Loan says.
Photograph by Haruka Sakaguchi

How Indigenous children finally got home

Native American people hold a ceremony to honor the remains of Indigenous children after they were discovered at a former boarding school
Members of a color guard comprised exclusively of Native servicewomen paid their respects to six of the nine Rosebud Lakota children who were buried at Rosebud Veterans Cemetery. In July 2021, the U.S. Army transferred the remains of the children back to the Rosebud Tribe from the Carlisle Barracks in Pennsylvania after six years of lobbying. There are still at least 150 children buried at Carlisle, where more than 10,000 Indigenous children were sent as part of a growing program to forcibly assimilate Native Americans via a network of government-run boarding schools.
Photograph by Daniella Zalcman

Pope Francis’ historic visit to Iraq

an Iraqi Christian family prays inside a monastery
Iraqi Christians pray inside the Al Saleeb monastery on the outskirts of Qaraqosh, Iraq. Members of Iraq’s shrinking Christian community and others drew hope from the Pope’s first-ever tour of the country in March 2021—despite the pandemic and security concerns. The momentous visit sparked hope and validation for many in a country that has been scarred by conflict for years.
Photograph by Moises Saman

White flags pay tribute to America’s COVID-19 losses

small white flags cover the ground on the National Mall in Washington DC to honor lives lost to COVID-19
To represent the sheer loss of American life during the COVID-19 pandemic, artist Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg created a sprawling memorial by planting more than 670,000 white flags on the grounds around the Washington Monument. Each day from September 17 through October 3, more flags were added to reflect the previous day’s death toll. Visitors were welcome to pause and reflect, or ask for an ink marker to leave tributes to lost loved ones.
Photograph by Wayne Lawrence
Artist Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg puts flags in the ground to honor American lives lost to COVID-19 on the National Mall in Washington DC
Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg, the artist who collaborated with Ruppert Landscape to install the memorial, poses for a portrait in front of the flags. The first was held on the D.C. Armory Parade grounds in the fall of 2020 with more than 200,000 flags. There were over 670,000 flags in the second iteration, which was the largest public, participatory art exhibition on the National Mall since the AIDS Quilt.
Photograph by Wayne Lawrence

Rush hour during a pandemic in Taipei, Taiwan

A roadway is packed to the brim with people on motorbikes
At rush hour, a torrent of scooters flows off a bridge into Taipei, Taiwan, bringing commuters from nearby Sanchong to the capital. The Alpha variant of SARA-CoV-2 caused a wave of cases from May to July, striking fear in many, but Taiwan was able to tamp down new cases thanks in part to strict quarantine policies and thorough contact tracing. The total case rate is more than 190 times lower in Taiwan than in the United States.
Photograph by Lam Yik Fei

COVID-19 compounded grief in long-term care

An elderly woman sits with her mask over her face
A resident sits with her mask covering her face in the communal area memory care unit at Albuquerque Heights Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Fifty-five residents of the facility contracted COVID-19, despite strict quarantine measures, and eight died. Many residents are still grappling with prolonged grief because lockdown measures have restricted access to traditional rituals.
Photograph by Isadora Kosofsky

Life goes on among high vaccination rates in Israel

Spaced out across the Tel Aviv opera house, a masked audience takes in a revue by the Israeli Opera’s sopranos. By the middle of March, Israel had vaccinated more than half its citizens–a world first that sharply drove down its case counts. The country also rolled out a “green pass” system for fully vaccinated or recovered Israelis. From late April to late June, Israel had an average of fewer than 100 new Covid-19 cases a day–until the arrival of the more contagious Delta variant, which fueled a third wave of cases.
Photograph by Dan Balilty

A debut concert and an act of resistance 

musicians play an outdoor concert in Venezuela at sunset
Sinfonía Desordenada (“Disorderly Symphony”) is a collaboration among 75 Venezuelan musicians who recorded an album during the COVID-19 lockdown. They recorded eight orchestral arrangements in their own homes over the course of the year, finally coming together to play an in-person concert in Caracas, the capital, on November 11.
Photograph by Ana María Arevalo Gosen

Graduation ceremonies, against all odds

women hug during a graduation ceremony at Howard University in Washington DC
Two students in decorated caps and gowns hug during the Howard University commencement in Washington, D.C., on May 8. The ceremony was one of many that joyfully resumed after the hiatus when universities paused in-person graduation ceremonies in 2020 due to the pandemic. Some universities even invited back 2020 graduates to walk across the stage belatedly.
Photograph by Jared Soares
high school graduates attend their graduation ceremony outside in DC. One graduated cap reads "Against all odds 2021"
Dunbar High School students sit at Audi Field in Washington, D.C., during the class of 2021 commencement on June 23. One student’s cap reads: “Against all odds 2021,” in light of the challenges that virtual classes and other obstacles posed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Photograph by Jared Soares

A refuge from violence against LGBTQ people

a man ties another man's bowtie before an event in Brazil
Marco Antonio Fernandes Emediato, left, adjusts the bow tie of his partner, Alexander Stefano Moreira Morais, in Noiva do Cordiero, Brazil. In a country that has one of the world’s most alarming rates of violence against LGBTQ people, this community serves as a refuge. “I know that being homosexual in the world isn’t easy…,” Marco says, “here, homosexuality is natural, because where there is love, there is everything.”
Photograph by Luisa Dörr

How Berlin’s club scene is weathering the pandemic

a family has a dance party in their home in Berlin, Germay
Thomas Benedix is one half of the DJ Duo Pan-Pot. During normal times Pan-Pot will play festivals with crowds of 20,000 fans, but during Berlin’s ban on indoor dance parties, Benedix livestreamed to fans from his living room as his wife, Merelinde, and two children danced along. Berlin is known for its dancing and club culture, but during the pandemic the government severely restricted the scene. In September 2021, that ban was briefly lifted, but the Omicron variant raised concerns and the ban was reimposed in December.
Photograph by Rubén Salgado Escudero

Quinceañera celebration is held in an agricultural field

a woman attends her Quincinera
Celebrated across Latin America and among the many communities in the United States, the quinceañera celebration symbolizes a girl’s entrance into womanhood at the age of 15. Here, Aaliyah celebrates her quinceañera in an agricultural field with friends and family in Lamont, California, where most of the party’s guests worked harvesting table grapes and melons.
Photograph by Brian L. Frank

Mexican traditions live on through female rodeo performers

Crystal Del Toro rides during a sliding competition, known as punta, during the opening presentation of a Mexican charreada in Snelling, California. She tugs the reins to make the horse slide on its back legs, which is similar to a move female fighters used during the Mexican Revolution to distract the enemy. Crystal is part of the Flor de Gardenia team, which is made up of female equestrians known as escaramuzas participating in Mexican rodeos. Teams are expected to complete complex synchronized choreography on horseback while riding sidesaddle in ornate outfits reminiscent of the garb women wore in the Mexican Revolution.
Photograph by
a woman poses for a portrait at a rodeo in California
Elda Bueno, coach and captain for the Flor de Gardenia team, poses for a portrait. The escaramuza charra is an all-female sport within the Mexican rodeo. Escaramuza translates to “skirmish” and the event is a contemporary addition to Mexico’s national sport, -whose pageantry commemorates five centuries of horsemanship. The sport also thrives within diaspora communities in the United States.
Photograph by Natalie Keyssar

Holding onto faith during the pandemic

people attend a church service in Alabama and hold candles
Churchgoers at Foley, Alabama’s St. Margaret of Scotland Catholic Church participate in a candlelight vigil the night before Easter Sunday. The service was led by the Reverend Paul Zohgby in both English and Spanish. Zohgby saw the growing Latino immigrant population in his community and decided to learn Spanish to minister to everyone in Foley. “We need a church with big fat open arms,” Zohgby says. “I was born and raised in mobile Alabama. The core of Christ’s message is to welcome the stranger.”
Photograph by Natalie Keyssar

Families of missing and murdered Indigenous women begin to heal

a Native American woman poses in her home with a picture of her mother who was killed in 1991
Christina Lastra holds a portrait of her mother, Alicia Lara, at her home in the redwoods in Eureka, California. Alicia was found dead in her car in Weitchpec in 1991 and is one of at least 5,712 missing and murdered Indigenous women, or MMIW, in the United States. Christina says that her mother’s case was poorly handled, being ruled an accident, and she later realized her mother was one of the MMIW cases that the Sovereign Bodies Institute tracks. “That was the day my mom was finally being seen and honored. That was the day we started to heal,” she said.
Photograph by Amber Bracken

Former Taliban members fight back

a man sits in his house with his children in Afghanistan
Qari Mehrabuddin sits with two of his five children in the living room of his house on the outskirt of Faīẕābād in the Badakhshan province of Afghanistan. Qari Mehrabuddin was among the first seven members of the Taliban who arrived in Badakhshan. Five years ago, he left the Taliban and is now a commander of a militia group, using his contacts and influence in Taliban-controlled territories to collect intelligence and recruit members. Afghanistan is now again under Taliban control after the United States pulled its forces out and the former Afghan government collapsed.
Photograph by Kiana Hayeri

Families displaced by war return home

A family returns to see the ruins of their home in Agdam, Azerbaijan
The Guliyev family look at their ruined home, returning after they took refuge in a decrepit Soviet-era sanatorium on the outskirts of Baku. For the first time in nearly three decades since the first Nagorno-Karabakh war, displaced Azerbaijani families like the Guliyevs were able to return to their homes, many of which were found in ruins. More than half a million Azerbaijanis lost their homes when the Armenian military seized control of seven Azberbaijani districts in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Photograph by Rena Effendi

Gathering to watch the sunrise once again

Visitors gather to watch the sunrise at Stonehenge on the morning of the autumn equinox
Visitors gather to watch the sunrise at Stonehenge on the morning of the fall equinox on September 23, 2021. In a typical year, around 800 people will gather at this famous and sacred Neolithic monument for the equinox; after COVID-19 closed down the site to visitors in 2020, only around 250 people converged to celebrate this year.
Photograph by Alice Zoo

More fisherman on the lake in Kenya

fishermen fish on their boat in Kenya on a foggy day
Fishermen pull their nets in at dawn on Lake Naivasha in Kenya as gulls and hamerkops fly overhead. Naivasha’s fishing industry began by accident when a torrent of rain flooded a fish farm upstream on the Malewa River. The number of fishermen on the lake increased greatly during the COVID-19 pandemic as the demand for other exports out of Kenya, such as flowers, declined.
Photograph by Brian Otieno

Sharing food amid climate change shortages

people receive donated banana roots to give them another source of food in Guatemala
In the La Palmilla village in Guatemala, community members hope to develop another food source from banana roots that were donated to them by residents of a nearby municipality. Communities across Guatemala face food shortages and chronic malnutrition, exacerbated by climate change because farmers in already dry areas can’t anticipate erratic and extreme weather behaviors.
Photograph by Daniele Volpe

Collecting seeds to offset carbon emissions

a man ascends a tree in California to collect cones from the top of the tree
Robert Beauchamp begins his ascent up a Ponderosa pine tree to collect seeds from cones at the top third of the tree. Skilled seed collectors like Beauchamp are critical to the strategy for the species’ survival and assisting the reproduction of trees, which is increasingly strained as climate change intensifies. The seeds are in high demand, at $15 a bushel, as the U.S. aims to plant billions more trees over the next two decades. The goal is to restore millions of acres of scorched forest and help offset planet-warming carbon emissions.
Photograph by Christie Hemm Klok

A sacred place provides proof of an African kingdom

Sudanese tourists visit Jebel Barkal, Sudan
Sudanese tourists visit Jebel Barkal to climb the small butte that has been considered sacred for thousands of years, especially when the Kingdom of Kush was at its height. Ruins of temples, one of which was dedicated to a god living atop the butte, are scattered around the base of the mountain. The legendary Kingdom of Kush, with its capitals in what is now northern Sudan, helped define the political and cultural landscape of northeastern Africa for more than a thousand years. Yet past archaeologists have offhandedly—and inaccurately—dismissed the Kushite kings as racially inferior, and their accomplishments as an inheritance of older Egyptian traditions.
Photograph by Nichole Sobecki

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