Gallery: From Hidden Snipers to Train Surfers, WIRED's Best Photo Stories of the Year
Simon Menner01HiddenSnipers-SimonMennerCamouflage007
__ [Can You Spot the Snipers Hidden in These Photos?](http://stag4.wired.com/2014/03/hidden-snipers#slide-id-151821)__ Simon Menner’s ongoing series *Camouflage* shows landscapes with German snipers hidden somewhere in the frame. The project is like a deadly Where’s Waldo exercise. For Menner, the challenge of finding the snipers isn’t the important part; the photos comment on the way things like fear, terror, and surveillance are constantly part of our lives in the modern world.
THIERRY COHEN/DANZIGER GALLERY02Rio de Janeiro 22° 56’ 42’’ S 2011-06-04 lst 12:34
__[What Cities Would Look Like if Lit Only by the Stars](http://stag4.wired.com/2014/11/thierry-cohen-darkened-cities#slide-id-1616769)__ French artist Thierry Cohen draws attention to this creeping loss in his series *Villes éteintes (Darkened Cities)*, which imagines the world’s largest cities under clear night skies. His photographs are as impossible as they are beautiful. The dark urban landscapes and vibrant constellations are composites of two images—one of the city and one of the sky.
TSA03TSA-001
__[The TSA’s Instagram Feed Is Terrifying and Totally Awesome](http://stag4.wired.com/2014/07/tsa-instagram)__ The feed is essentially a gallery of some of the craziest items people try to get past security checkpoints. There’s no shortage of material—the TSA claims an average of 40 firearms (often loaded) are seized at checkpoints every week. Nine-bladed super knife? Grenade? Everything you need to assemble a bomb? Yes, all that and more.
Léo Delafontaine04conch2
__[The World’s Tiniest Countries and the Eccentrics Who Rule Them](http://stag4.wired.com/2014/11/micronations#slide-id-1637585) __ Never heard of the Imperial Kingdom of Calsahara? The Conch Republic? The Principality of Sealand? You’re not alone. Léo Delafontaine hadn’t either until 2012, when he visited the Republic of Saugeais, a self-proclaimed micronation in eastern France. He’s since become fascinated with “countries” unrecognized by world governments and organizations.
Tom Jamieson05tj-weapons-of-maidan01
__ [The Brutal DIY Weapons of the Ukrainian Revolution](http://stag4.wired.com/2014/03/ukraine-diy-weapons#slide-id-632316)__ The revolters who battled the Ukrainian army in Maidan Square and toppled President Yanukovych did so while armed with little more than sticks, bats and sledgehammers. Their nasty homemade hardware is the subject of a series of portraits by photographer Tom Jamieson.
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__[Photographer Recreates an ’80s Portrait Studio—With Awesome Results](http://stag4.wired.com/2014/12/photographer-recreates-80s-portrait-studiowith-awesome-results/#slide-id-1659013)__ Robbie Augspurger’s series *Glamour & Headshots* wasn’t inspired by retro filters on an Instagram app. Instead, he makes portraits that look like The Partridge Family because that’s the photography he grew up with.
Ji Yeo07Picture 009
__[Unsettling Images of Patients in Hiding After Plastic Surgery (NSFW)](http://stag4.wired.com/2014/03/yeo-beauty-recovery-room)__ In South Korea, plastic surgery is rampant, and the goal is often to look less Asian. While there are plenty of photos of the final results, artist Ji Yeo balances the visual scales by documenting the ugly side of becoming “beautiful.”
Thomas Dagg08Tauntaun
__[What It’d Look Like if *Star Wars* Spilled Into the Real World](http://stag4.wired.com/2014/10/thomas-dagg-star-wars#slide-id-1608709)__ Thomas Dagg uses Photoshop to seamlessly blend characters and spaceships from the films into every day scenes. The images invite viewers into the world of his childhood, when he imagined seeing a galaxy far, far away in everything around him.
GERD LUDWIG/INSTITUTE09The Long Shadow of Chernobyl - A Photo Book by Gerd Ludwig - PRESS IMAGES
__[30 Years After Chernobyl’s Meltdown, Gripping Photos Expose the Human Fallout](http://stag4.wired.com/2014/04/gerd-ludwig-chernobyl#slide-id-721551)__ The explosion at the Vladimir Ilyich Lenin nuclear power plant released more radiation than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and one might never know they were being poisoned until months, even years later. Veteran photographer Gerd Ludwig’s spent 20 years photographing the area, chronicling the ongoing consequences of the radioactive release.
Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project10earthrise.l.w-e1398204534682
__[The Hackers Who Recovered NASA’s Lost Lunar Photos](http://stag4.wired.com/2014/04/lost-lunar-photos-recovered-by-great-feats-of-hackerdom-developed-at-a-mcdonalds/#x)__ These self-described techno-archaeologists have been on a mission to recover and digitize forgotten photos taken in the ‘60s by a quintet of scuttled lunar satellites. The Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project has since 2007 brought some 2,000 pictures back from 1,500 analog data tapes.
BIEKE DEPOORTER11DEB2012012G1203-6815
__[Total Strangers Let This Photographer Crash for a Night in Their Homes](http://stag4.wired.com/2014/11/bieke-depoorter-2/)__ Bieke Depoorter has an unorthodox way of working: The photographer has been wandering cities in Russia, the US and Egypt asking strangers if she can spend the night in their home. Surprisingly, many of them say yes.
Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii1203959v
__[The Final Years of Pre-Soviet Russia, Captured in Glorious Color](http://stag4.wired.com/2014/03/prokudin-gorskii-photos-russia#slide-id-640730)__ In 1909, Nicholas authorized Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii to document his empire using a new technique called additive color. Over a period of about six years, Prokudin-Gorskii took some 10,000 pictures, systematically chronicling Russia’s rich culture, industry, and architecture.
Doug Menuez13FG-menuez-14
__[Intimate Photos From the Golden Age of Silicon Valley](http://stag4.wired.com/2014/11/doug-menuez-fearless-genius#x)__ Doug Menuez spent 15 years in the middle of what many call the golden era of Silicon Valley. Between 1985 and 2000, he had unparalleled access to Steve Jobs, Steve Capps, and 70 other people and companies, including Adobe and NeXT. His amazing archive of images comprise one of the richest records of this seminal moment in American and technological history.
Olivia Locher1417-Alabama
__[The Most Ridiculous Laws in America](http://stag4.wired.com/2014/07/olivia-locher-i-fought-the-law#slide-id-1307801)__ It’s not hard to satirize statutes that ban people from picnicking in a graveyard or tickling a woman’s chin with a feather duster. Many of the things that legislators have seen fit to legislate read like something straight out of Monty Python. Olivia Locher portrays them in irreverent photos inspired heavily by the bold colors and aesthetics of pop art.
