In this week's special photo issue, we pause to reflect on the year's most memorable moments.
During a time when "twerking" eclipsed coverage of the war in Syria, and our government literally stopped working over the Affordable Care Act, we wanted to tap into the power of photographs to tell the stories and illustrate both the important and the absurd.
Some images are already ingrained in our cultural memory -- who could forget Wendy Davis standing for 11 hours straight in an attempt to filibuster an abortion bill in Texas? Or Jennifer Lawrence falling down on her way to the stage to claim her Academy Award? Or, most recently, the moving pictures of mourners at Nelson Mandela's funeral.
Others are less familiar. In our Voices section, Michael Shaw, a visual journalism analyst, presents his top media photography of the year, opting for images that didn't make a splash but tell a vital story nonetheless. A remarkable image of Pope Francis on the subway, for example, barely made the media rounds.
Elsewhere, Julie Grahame, editor-in-chief of photography magazine aCurator, selects five fine art photographs that represent the best of the year to her, including a striking shot from Michael Massala's "Afterlife" series that hauntingly captures a roller coaster on the Jersey Shore submerged in water, post-Hurricane Sandy.
Then, there are the photographs that say what we don't have words for -- the violence at the Boston Marathon, followed by the Red Sox's moving tribute to the bombing victims after their World Series win; the outpouring of anger in Turkey; and an image of a shark within a shark that you have to see to believe.
We close with a farewell to those we lost this year -- Mandela, Peter O'Toole, Joan Fontaine, Roger Ebert, Helen Thomas, and many others who made history in their time.
We hope you enjoy our look back on the joys and challenges of 2013, and we at The Huffington Post wish you every happiness in the year ahead.
This story appears the special Year in Photos issue of our weekly iPad magazine, Huffington, available Friday, Dec. 27 in the iTunes App store.