December 16, 2014 12:22 AM EST
A s Instagram hit a milestone this month, with its number of monthly active users ballooning to 300 million , TIME, in association with the photo-sharing app, takes a look back at the key moments of 2014.
The selection of images, shared by some of Instagram’s most popular and respected photographers, offers an intimate view of some of the defining events of the year: From the toll of war in Gaza to the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., and from the border between Mexico and the U.S. all the way to Mongolia, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone.
“Real moments are captured and posted on Instagram every single day, from Nana Kofi Acquah’s image of a Tanzanian doctor timing a baby’s labored breathing using his mobile phone, to Brendan Hoffman’s haunting first reactions upon arriving at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in eastern Ukraine,” says Pamela Chen, Instagram’s Editorial Director. “These are just a sampling of the powerful images shared by people around the world in 2014.”
Read next: The Top 10 Photos of 2014
More from Newroz in Diyarbakir.
#newroz #kurds #turkey #amed #diyarbakir #flags #somanyflags Scout Tufankjian (@stufankjian ) via Instagram Syrians pray at the metal gate where the head of Husayn (grandson of Muhammad) was displayed during Friday prayer at Omayad Mosque in #Damascus #Syria Sergey Ponomarev (@sergeyponomarev ) via Instagram McAllen, Texas. A group of women and two unaccompanied children are detained on a levee. Exhausted and hungry the group appeared relieved to be found. It turned out they had travelled from Guatemala and Honduras together. Part 1 of My film 'The Fence' comes out this coming Monday @msnbcphoto Charles Ommanney (@charlesommanney ) via Instagram Boarding the bus, sent to greet us, on the tarmac at the airport in Mogadishu, Somalia Daniel Berehulak (@danielberehulak ) via Instagram #AisholPan and her #GoldenEagle in action (#BayanUlgii , #Mongolia ) Khasar Sondag (@inomad ) via Instagram Japan’s Nuclear Power Plant Belt: A 65 year old woman Yumiko Aoki works at her rice field during a super hot day, in an extremely depopulating Oku-Izumo in Shimane, one of the nuke-plant prefectures in Japan. All of nuke power plant regions and nearby have faced the drastic depopulation, the shrinking of job market and the aging society. That was one of the biggest reasons nuke reactors were created in such areas, though after the 2011 Fukushima nuke power plant disaster, all reactors have been suspend for the operation. Yet, the Japanese government and many residents of the nuke power plant belt want to resume. #japan’s_nuclear_power_plant_belt #old_people #oku_izumo #depopulation #aging_society #shimane #japan #rural_area #countryside #handy_capped #iphonephotography #photodocumentary Q. Sakamaki (@qsakamaki ) via Instagram One of a group of local coal miners searches a field of sunflowers near #Grabovo #ukraine for #mh17 airplane debris and human remains. #україни | Brendan Hoffman / @prime_collective for #gettyimagesnews Brendan Hoffman (@hoffmanbrendan ) via Instagram A doctor at work. Ifakara, Tanzania. What I really like the most in this photo is the mother's silent hand in the frame. What will we do without mothers?
Photo by Nana Kofi Acquah @africashowboy (Copyright: 2014). Nana Kofi Acquah (@africashowboy ) via Instagram Hundreds of demonstrators gather in DC's #MeridianHillPark aka #MalcolmXpark to honor, and hold a #momentOfSilence for, #MichaelBrown, the unarmed teenager recently killed by police in #Ferguson, MO, and all others affected by #policeBrutality. (photo by @jaheezus aka jahi chikwendiu/The Washington Post) #NMOS14 Jahi Chikwendu (@jaheezus ) via Instagram Feels nice to fly.#hipstamatic #mexicocity Adriana Zehbrauskas (@adrianazehbrauskas ) via Instagram "This is the first quiet day for Kiev's residents to come here. So we came to put flowers and pay respect to the people who died." —Olga, 26 years old, from Kiev "Today there is mourning" From my dispatch with viewfinder portraits from Maidan, Kiev on Foreign Policy.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/02/24/today_there_is_mourning_kiev_protester_maidan
Images made on an iPhone through my Bronica viewfinder.
#kiev #ukraine #filmisnotdead #fujifilm #bronica #6x6 #portrait #photography #photojournalism @viiphoto Anastasia Taylor Lind (@anastasiatl ) via Instagram A platoon of female Shan State soldiers sit on the parade ground during the Golden Jubilee celebrations of the founding of the Shan State. #army #soliders #shanstate #burma #panospictures Patrick Brown, Panos Pictures © 2014 Patrick Brown (@patrickbrownphoto ) via Instagram Migrant workers develop a pistachio plantation outside of #Alpaugh, #California, #USA on June 16, 2014.
With the promise of a hefty return investment groups develop large almond and #pistachio orchards amidst the historic California drought in the arid southern part of Central Valley. To irrigate this farm, a couple of 1000 ft deep wells costing roughly $500,000 each were setup on the land. The demand for new wells in the Valley has never been higher and as drilling companies operate at their maximum capacity the current waiting time takes about 8 months.
#water #watercrisis #complexemergency #drought #centralvalley #environment #agriculture @azdarya #everydayUSA Balazs Gardi (@balazsgardi ) via Instagram Home of the tent! Nomadic bride and groom at north-east of #iranFollowing
Ako Salemi (@f64s125 ) via Instagram The delivery of aid to the survivors of last Friday's landslide disaster in Badakhshan Province caused clashes between villagers and police who fired warning shots to disperse the crowd yesterday. The mood is somewhat less tense today but distribution is still chaotic at best. Andrew Quilty / Oculi. 7.5.2014 #afghanistan #badakhshan #landslide #aid #emergency Andrew Quilty (@andrewquilty ) via Instagram The Pasture of The Fourth Horseman
There is a slight, upward grade from the escape hatch of the Titan I nuclear missile base. Each of the 18 sites scattered throughout the interior of the U.S. are, essentially, perfect copies of one another. There are academic differences —the location of the septic ponds or how the concrete domes were formed —but a single, common schematic laid over the deceptively innocuous landmarks on the surface will decode the mystery of what lies underneath. More than a quarter mile of tunnels like this connect the silos to their various support structures like the deep tunnels of an apocalyptic ant pile. At the end of this tunnel, there is an enormous fuel terminal that serviced the sixteen story nuclear missile held in a deep silo just next to it. Each missile site contained three ICBMs that could be fired in sequences separated by about fifteen minutes. It took 47 seconds to open the silo lid and roughly two minutes to raise the missile sixteen stories to the surface. Before the site was salvaged, the walkway would have been covered with steel and the racks on either side would have linked the launch control room to the missile itself with hundreds of miles of cables. Perhaps it goes without saying, but its recitation somehow underscores the purpose of these facilities: there was no protocol for reloading a launched missile silo. These items were one-time-use-only. Matt Slaby (@mattslaby ) via Instagram At King Tom Cemetery in Freetown, Sierra Leone, most of the graves are freshly dug and unmarked. Esther George, a health worker who died of Ebola, had the only permanent nameplate in the whole area. Yesterday the crowded ebola section received 25 bodies. #onassignment for @wsjphotos in #Freetown #sierraleone covering #ebola Glenna Gordon (@glennagordon ) via Instagram A #Palestinian #girl stands during a #rain storm while #walking through a neighbourhood #destroyed during the 50 day conflict between #Israel and #Hamas, in the Shejaiya neighbourhood of #Gaza #City on October 20, 2014. By Wissam Nassar @wissamgaza #wissamgaza #war #NYT William Nassar (@wissamgaza ) via Instagram The dots and numbers painted on Kim Il Sung Square, and the street running through it, make up a complex guide grid used to orchestrate the mass gatherings and parades held here. I know ice photographed this same thing many times but I think it's interesting and revealing. David Guttenfelder (@dguttenfelder ) via Instagram Ukraine & Belarus together! #ukraine #belarus #flag #flags #fire #onfire #барикади #barricades #грушевського #revolution #революція #євромайдан #euromaidan #kyiv #kiev #ukraine #night #kievblog #kiev_foto #kiev_ig #kiev_am #insta_kiev #insta_kyiv #insta_ukraine #kyivgram #kyivtype #kyiv_sky #kyiv_talk #kiev_foto #igerskiev #igukraine Alexey Beloschuk (@beloschuk ) via Instagram Image from my series Politics in Black and White which is included in The Space Between curated by Henry Jacobson opening today at Center for Photography at Woodstock. Other artist include @postcardshome @echosight @tiny_collective @dannyghitis #hillary #clinton #2016 #politics #woodstock @cpwwpc #jonimitchell @markpetersonpixs Mark Peterson (@markpetersonpixs ) via Instagram A homemade personal protection suit. This man brought his sick mother to the #Ebola clinic in #monrovia #liberia. Ben Solomon (@bcsolomon ) via Instagram Alejandro Kirchuk via Instagram Siti and her son Yong visits the grave of her first child, Haikal, who passed away due to a sudden illness. Siti was not aware that she was HIV positive and didn't take precaution to prevent passing on the virus to her baby. Siti has been undergoing Antiretroviral Therapy since then. As a result, Siti is healthy and although she is HIV positive, Yong is negative. At his last checkup Yong weighs 10.5kg and he will be celebrating his 1st birthday this month.
I am continuing the 2nd chapter of my project documenting the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Tanah Papua, collaborating with the Clinton Foundation on a campaign to lower stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS in the provinces.
#againstallodds #papua #indonesia #HIV #AIDS #epidemic Andri Tambunan (@andritambunan ) via Instagram Goodbye Thingyan, catch ya next year! #myanmar #thingyan2014 #thingyan #asia #newyear Lauren DeCicca (@deciccaphoto ) via Instagram Project Mi Barrio Ð Nahuelito y su Abuelito. #Rumihuaico, #Ecuador, #projectmibarrio, #photojournalism, @runa_photos, @panospictures, @natgeo, @thephotosociety Ivan Kashinsky (@ivankphoto ) via Instagram Children play on "jackstones" or concrete structures made by foreign NGOs to serve as breakwater for storm surges in Hernani Eastern Samar. #Haiyan #Yolanda #OneYearAfter John Javellana (@javellanajohn ) via Instagram Eritrean wedding in Haifa today. #israel #wedding #lovemypeople #haifa #bahaigarden #view #eritrea #stairs Malin Fezehai (@malinfezehai ) via Instagram Life moves on in Tacloban port, 6 months after #haiyan # Philipinnes @plansverige Pieter Ten Hoopen (@pietertenhoopen ) via Instagram More Must-Reads from TIME How Donald Trump Won The Best Inventions of 2024 Why Sleep Is the Key to Living Longer Robert Zemeckis Just Wants to Move You How to Break 8 Toxic Communication Habits Nicola Coughlan Bet on Herself—And Won Why Vinegar Is So Good for You Meet TIME's Newest Class of Next Generation Leaders 
