Sound Stories. Sound Voices.
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
You are on the KUOW archive site. Click here to go to our current site.

Hit of nostalgia: KUOW's year in photos

The University of Washington men's rowing team prepares to launch their shells during an early morning practice.
KUOW Photo/Matt Mills McKnight
The University of Washington men's rowing team prepares to launch their shells during an early morning practice.

In the last few years, we've become more visual here at KUOW. 

Maybe that's ironic, because we're a radio station, and we don't have a professional photographer on staff.

Sometimes we hire talented freelance photographers, but usually we rely on our reporters. They do this as they juggle microphone, curly cords and those beefy headphones.   

I went through the photos from this year and found them stirring — it was an emotional year, as everyone on the internet likes to remind us: The notorious Jungle, a homeless encampment, was cleared out after a shooting there left two dead, and the presidential campaigns wore on everyone's nerves.

It was also a year of beauty and creativity. After a gas pipeline explosion in Seattle's Greenwood neighborhood, artists painted murals on the wooden planks that covered the neighborhood's businesses.

And Seattleites barely blinked as they trekked to the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota to protest a proposed oil pipeline.

In some of these photos, too, you'll see smaller moments that went mostly unnoticed: A woman's reaction to being evicted from a homeless encampment; and a modest woman named Jody who transforms herself into a drag queen with the archiest eyebrows you ever saw.

[asset-images[{"caption": "Jody Kuehner, left, without her makeup, and Jody Kuehner as Cherdonna, right, with her makeup.", "fid": "126691", "style": "placed_full", "uri": "public://201605/cherdonnaLEDE.jpg", "attribution": "Credit KUOW Photo/Lisa Wang"}]]Cherdonna shows there's more than one way to be a woman

[asset-images[{"caption": "Blues singer Courtney Weaver performs in the KUOW studios. Weaver was shot in the face by her fiancé; her story resonated at a time when women in the U.S. were sharing stories of domestic violence in light of then-candidate Donald Trump's violent comments about women.", "fid": "127505", "style": "placed_full", "uri": "public://201606/courtneyweaver.jpg", "attribution": "Credit KUOW Photo/Isolde Raftery"}]]

Her fiancé shot her in the face but she still has a voice

[asset-images[{"caption": "Cody Lee Miller sits near the top of a sequoia tree Wednesday, March 23, in downtown Seattle. He was charged with malicious mischief and assault after he climbed to the top and remained there for 25 hours.", "fid": "125259", "style": "placed_wide", "uri": "public://201603/AP_1603231742063840.jpg", "attribution": "Credit AP Photo/Elaine Thompson "}]]

#ManinTree mom heartbroken by years of trying to help her son

[asset-images[{"caption": "Cody Lee Miller, known internationally as #manintree, about five years ago in Roseburg, Oregon. He lived there with his grandmother.", "fid": "125268", "style": "placed_wide", "uri": "public://201603/codyleemiller.jpg", "attribution": "Credit Courtesy of Lisa Gossett"}]][asset-images[{"caption": "Nestora Salgado, an activist from Renton who was imprisoned in Mexico, spoke with supporters upon arrival at Sea-Tac Airport on March 22.", "fid": "125013", "style": "placed_full", "uri": "public://201603/P1070248.JPG", "attribution": "Credit KUOW Photo/Liz Jones"}]]Renton grandma back from Mexican prison: 'Thank God it's over'

[asset-images[{"caption": "Supporters wearing Gays for Trump shirts at a rally for then-presidential frontronner Donald Trump rally in Lynden, in northwest Washington state, on May 7. ", "fid": "126458", "style": "placed_full", "uri": "public://201605/gaystrump1.JPG", "attribution": "Credit Daniel Berman for KUOW"}]]Donald Trump, gay icon?!

[asset-images[{"caption": "Kara Bernstine, who is homeless, said she knows the Jungle homeless encampment isn't perfectly safe, but it felt safer than other places in the city. The Jungle was cleared out in October.", "fid": "126036", "style": "placed_full", "uri": "public://201605/jungle-0101.jpg", "attribution": "Credit KUOW Photo/Joshua McNichols"}]]Yes, I live in the Jungle, and so do 400 other people

[asset-images[{"caption": "This mural by Wakuda Studio went up at North 85th Street and Greenwood Avenue North after a gasline explosion in the early hours of March 9. No one was killed in the explosion and the neighborhood is rebuilding.", "fid": "125329", "style": "placed_full", "uri": "public://201604/greenwoodmural1__12_of_17_.jpg", "attribution": "Credit KUOW Photo/Isolde Raftery"}]]PHOTOS: 17 Fantastical murals rise up from the Greenwood explosion

[asset-images[{"caption": "Iesha Gray, 20, resigned from her job at the U.S. Postal Service because she felt she wasn't given time or space she found acceptable to pump.", "fid": "131635", "style": "placed_full", "uri": "public://201611/Iesha.jpg", "attribution": "Credit KUOW Photo/Isolde Raftery"}]]This mom's choice: Nurse her baby or quit her job at the Postal Service

[asset-images[{"caption": "High Voltage Music co-owner Chris Lomba in his backyard shop in north Seattle. He says his shop on Capitol Hill had to close after the loss of a nearby rehearsal space that brought in musicians.", "fid": "123076", "style": "placed_full", "uri": "public://201512/Chris-3_0.jpg", "attribution": "Credit KUOW Photo/Gil Aegerter"}]]Seattle is too expensive for the artists who helped it boom

[asset-images[{"caption": "Resident Cecilia Carey objected to the clearing of the former Nickelsville homeless encampment on South Dearborn Street by police and city officials on the morning of March 11.", "fid": "124766", "style": "placed_full", "uri": "public://201603/P1070151.JPG", "attribution": "Credit KUOW Photo/Liz Jones"}]]Homeless residents booted from Nickelsville camp in Seattle

[asset-images[{"caption": "Osman Mohamed, a refugee from Somalia who ended up in a camp in Kenya, cries upon hearing that his father has been having medical problems. Reporter Liz Jones spent nine months following three refugees, including Mohamed, in the Seattle-area.", "fid": "129172", "style": "placed_full", "uri": "public://201608/refugee_somalia_MK_03.jpg", "attribution": "Credit KUOW Photo/Mike Kane"}]]I thought this would be paradise: A refugee moves to Seattle

[asset-images[{"caption": "Joe Burnison works as a deckhand aboard Loki, a salmon gillnetting boat in Puget Sound. Loki is owned by one of his oldest friends, Jonah Knutson. The two men grew up in West Seattle. Knutson says he would like to keep up this life, but he's not sure if Seattle's rising costs will allow it.", "fid": "126367", "style": "placed_full", "uri": "public://201605/loki_05.jpg", "attribution": "Credit KUOW Photo/Mike Kane"}]]PHOTOS: Fishing at night in downtown Seattle

[asset-images[{"caption": "Beth Harrott, left, and Annabelle Richardson, watch the election results come in at The Century Ballroom. And yes, those are wigs (not their real hair) and pantsuits for Hillary. ", "fid": "131385", "style": "placed_full", "uri": "public://201611/meryl5.jpg", "attribution": "Credit Meryl Schenker for KUOW"}]]Photos of women grieving in Seattle on Election Night

[asset-images[{"caption": "'No one deserves this,' says UW student Nasro Hassan. She was attacked on the University of Washington campus Nov. 15.", "fid": "132519", "style": "placed_full", "uri": "public://201612/20161122-nasro-hassan.jpg", "attribution": "Credit KUOW PHOTO/GIL AEGERTER"}]]Hate crime? Muslim student attacked at University of Washington

[asset-images[{"caption": "An old copy of the Polk Directory at the Puget Sound Regional Branch of the Washington State Archives in Bellevue, Washington. A team of KUOW reporters investigated the history of a house in Seattle's southend, and learned of some of its first owners in this weathered directory.", "fid": "127381", "style": "placed_wide", "uri": "public://201606/5researchpolkdirectory.JPG", "attribution": "Credit KUOW Photo/Isolde Raftery"}]]If these walls could talk, the stories they would tell

[asset-images[{"caption": "Reporter Ashley Ahearn met Orlando Davis, of St. Paul, Minnesota, when she went to cover the protests at Standing Rock in North Dakota. Davis said the protests were about being human — everybody's gotta to drink water, he said.", "fid": "132504", "style": "placed_full", "uri": "public://201612/dapl7.jpg", "attribution": "Credit KUOW Photo/Ashley Ahearn"}]]Reporter Ashley Ahearn's notebook: Standing Rock

[asset-images[{"caption": "This is the bag that a slave named Rose gave to her 9-year-old daughter Ashley on the day that she was sold. Mother and daughter never saw each other again, but the bag was passed down through generations.", "fid": "132384", "style": "placed_wide", "uri": "public://201612/ashley.jpg", "attribution": "Credit Courtesy of Middleton Place Foundation"}]]A slave mother's love in 56 carefully stitched words