Here are 24 of my favorite images I had the honor of capturing this year for Jacksonville Today.
My hope is that my work focuses on our authentic shared humanity, as algorithms and AI increasingly divide us.
I had the privilege to capture felons and presidents, Deltas and Omegas, victorious moments as well as somber occasions, American football and global football, and so much more.
The second week of March may have been one of the most consequential of the year. That week ended with former JEA CEO Aaron Zahn being convicted on federal charges for trying to profit from the sale of the public utility.
That same week began with the Duval County School Board’s listening to a presentation from an Alabama-based firm that suggested it close more than 30 schools.
During an April workshop, nearly a dozen people addressed the school board with concerns about the potential closures.
It turned out that none of the schools those parents advocated for during the April 16 workshop – Atlantic Beach Elementary, Fishweir Elementary, West Riverside Elementary, Holiday Hill Elementary and John Stockton Elementary – will close at the end of the 2024-25 academic year.
As parents and administrators debated the future of local schools, I was fortunate enough to train my lens on their students in several moments of triumph. The Duval County Public Schools Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge brought together bright young minds from across the county.
In February, I was there when Mandarin’s boys soccer team went unbeaten in its first 20 matches of the season.
Later that month, I went to photograph a state quarterfinal basketball game between Jacksonville’s Raines and Jackson high schools. A thousand people crammed into the old gymnasium on Main Street to watch the Tigers return to the state tournament following a 63-42 win.
I barely made it to the basketball game in time because I had spent the afternoon listening to Iona King and Donal Godfrey share their tale of survival of a race-motivated bombing in Murray Hill. It was unbelievable to look at 66-year-old Donal and imagine what he endured as a first-grader.
The same year as the bombin, Freedom Summer arrived in Northeast Florida in 1964. This June, St. Augustine commemorated its 60th anniversary with a series of events. With the sound of the Atlantic Ocean in the background, Shed Dawson and Purcell Conway, in town to be honored for their participation in the movement as teens, reflected that not everyone who participated in the Civil Rights Movement had the privilege of growing old.
Like the Rev. Martin Luther King, who famously visited St. Augustine that summer as well. It wasn’t lost on me that I was the same age as King when I photographed this year’s 37th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast, marking the first time in five years that Jacksonville united to celebrate the slain civil rights icon.
On the same day in January that the Jacksonville NAACP and Jacksonville Urban League honored King alongside other organizations in the city, the Dollar General in Grand Park reopened after more than four months. The store was where a white supremacist killed three Black people last summer.
I will never forget the names and legacies of Angela Carr, Jerrald Gallion and A.J. Laguerre Jr.
In August, Jacksonville remembered Carr, Gallion and Laguerre with a soil collection ceremony at a park a few hundred yards away from the Dollar General where they died. On Aug. 26, the one-year anniversary of their death, I captured then-Chief of Staff Darnell Smith holding the posthumous degree that Florida State College at Jacksonville awarded to Laguerre.
The year took me from solemn remembrances to moments of joy for Jacksonville’s only major league professional sports team, like when Jacksonville native Mac Jones lived almost every boy’s dream and scored a touchdown for the home team in November.
This year has been another forgettable season for the Jaguars, but it was also the year the club committed to Jacksonville for at least the next 35 years.
Days after the Jacksonville City Council approved a $1.4 billion renovation package for the stadium, team owner Shad Khan and Mayor Donna Deegan were all smiles.
One person whose team won a lot this year was Dean Black. The immediate past chairman of the Duval GOP spent election night partying as the local, state and federal results rolled in.
During an election season with at times violent partisanship – some in Northeast Florida – former President Donald Trump was victorious once again.
Trump’s historic success – he became the first person in 132 years to lose their perch in the Oval Office and regain the presidency – was the end of the dream for Vice President Kamala Harris, who had hoped to be the first female president.
When Harris visited Jacksonville in May to decry the state’s six-week abortion ban, few could have envisioned her at the top of the 2024 Democratic ticket.
The final weeks of the national presidential campaign featured conversations about immigration and the role of unions, two issues at play in Jacksonville.
Wolfson High School senior Anna Jones, one of three winners of the DCPS Hispanic Heritage Essay Contest, began her essay with a line from Hamilton. “Immigrants, we get the job done!”
Later, in her essay, Jones wrote that Jacksonville attorney Paula Parra Harris has illuminated the possibilities for her life.
Just as the Unidos Jax celebration kicked off on Oct. 3, the International Longshoreman’s Association reached a temporary agreement with the U.S. Maritime Alliance. The union, including its more than 1,800 local members, ending their first strike in nearly 50 years.
Local longshoremen were not the only group who fought for what they thought they deserved this year.
In June, a handful of girls and young women pleaded with Circuit Judge Tatiana Salvador to punish former Douglas Anderson teacher Jeffrey Clayton, following his guilty plea on charges of kissing and touching a student.
Salvador sentenced 67-year-old Clayton to 10 years in prison and three years of probation.
I wasn’t only there to capture the worst in our local educators.
Donovan Masline embodies some of the best.
The Raines football coach, who also doubles as the school’s dean of students, led the Vikings to a 13-1 season, the first time in 27 years that Raines won its first 13 games. Raines didn’t win its state championship, but few from these parts ever have.
Speaking of locals who are used to winning, Fernandina Beach’s Poe Pinson qualified this year for the Paris Olympics. She finished fifth in the street skateboarding competition and was the highest-ranked American.
In August, her hometown threw a parade in her honor and renamed a skate park after the 19-year-old local legend.
I look forward to continuing the privilege of photographing Jacksonville’s people, places and moments in 2025. -Will Brown
