How do you pick the 100 best photos of 2023?

A few weeks ago, I walked byTIMEphoto editors Kim Bubello and Sylvia Kang staring at a wall covered with dozens of photographs taken during the last 11 months. I asked them how many more pictures they needed to remove from the wall to get to their selection ofthe 100 top photographs of the year. They laughed at me and went back to work.\xa0

Theirs is a mammoth task and the culmination of a year’s worth of work publishing\xa0pictures taken\xa0from\xa0across the planetto\xa0inform, delight, and move TIME’s audiences.

“Even though we collectively scroll through thousands ofphotographseach day, there are still those that stop us in our tracks on a regular basis,” TIME’s director of photography Katherine Pomerantz writes in her introduction to the final picks for the Top 100 Photos of 2023.

The collection is a powerful example of the vitality and importance that photographers play in telling the array of stories that matter most to us each year. It is also a credit to TIME’s photo editors who bring their work to you every day.

Please take a look and let me know what you think.Sam@time.com.