Looking Back: 2012 in photographs

Of the 113 photographs in this collection of our favorite images of 2012, we count just seven that do not show a person. (Six if you consider the Bobcat a person!)

There are photographs showing many people coming together as one: the Class of 2012 starting a new tradition by forming their class numerals on Garcelon Field; the memorial gathering in the Chapel following the death of Evan Dube ’15 last spring; and the audience of 2,500 witnessing the installation of a new Bates president in October.

Other photos illuminate the singular power of two — like the image of President Emeritus Don Harward and Professor Emeritus John Kelsey leaning toward each other, affectionately, as they leave the service for the naming of the Gomes Chapel in October.

And a few show one person looking back at us.

And a few show one person looking back at us, like the portrait of theater faculty member Kati Vecsey, somehow appearing both very friendly and very demanding at the same time — which is perhaps why she won the Kroepsch teaching award last year.

No man, or woman, “is an island entire of itself,” wrote John Donne. “Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”

These photographs — taken by Phyllis Graber Jensen, Mike Bradley, Lincoln Benedict ’09 and Mikey Pasek ’12 — explore how that idea is alive and strong here at Bates, where, in other words (the words of President Clayton Spencer), “we encounter individuals in their full humanity.” — H. Jay Burns