Feb. 2: Your lens to the interne t's most powerful photographs. 📸

Feb. 2: Week in Photography

📸Your lens to the internet's most powerful photographs 📸

MOST POWERFUL PHOTO OF THE WEEK

Lionel Hahn / Sipa / AP

The world was stunned to learn that legendary basketball player Kobe Bryant, 41, died last Sunday after his helicopter crashed in California. Bryant's 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, was also killed in the crash, along with seven other people.

In this emotional picture taken the evening after Bryant's death, thousands of adoring fans have gathered outside the Staples Center, the home to Bryant's former team the Los Angeles Lakers, to pay their respects to one of the greatest basketball players who ever lived.

📸FOR YOUR 👀 ONLY:

IN THE STREETS WITH THE MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK

Since its founding in 1923, the Museum of the City of New York has set out to preserve the histories and culture of New York City and the people who live there.

A new exhibition titled Collecting New York’s Stories: Stuyvesant to Sid Vicious brings together the museum's latest acquisitions — which date from as far back as the 1910s to as recent as this past year. Here, Sean Corcoran, curator of prints and photographs, speaks with BuzzFeed News about how these acquisitions offer new perspectives of the Big Apple.

Can you talk a bit about how this exhibition was organized on your part?

Sean Corcoran: I went through thousands of photographs that were acquired in the last three years and tried to select images that offer a sense of the range of lives and lifestyles in the city over the course of a full century. Some of the earliest photographs in the exhibition are pieces by the Harlem Renaissance photographer James Van Der Zee, which are dated from the late teens or early ‘20s, while some of our most recent pictures were made within the year.

Walter Rosenblum, "Hopscotch, 105th Street, New York, 1952."

The vast majority of these images on view are of New Yorkers just living their lives, so it could be something as vernacular as children playing on the street. In fact, there are several of pictures children playing on the street which actually show what this was like in different eras — from Walter Rosenblum’s photographs circa 1950 of a girl playing hopscotch right around the corner from the museum on 105th street to Martha Cooper’s photographs from about 1980 of children creatively playing in the ruins of the Lower Eastside.

What can you say is something you’ve noticed in these pictures that every generation of New Yorkers has in common?

SC: That’s a good question. There’s always a certain resilience to living in the city, because the truth is that it can be a challenging environment. One of the things we also try to be very conscious of doing is being inclusive and collecting the lives of all the various New Yorkers and immigrant communities. It’s important for us to give a sense of all the different people who live here and the various ways that they make their way through life in the city.

Martha Cooper, "Lower East Side [Boy Jumping from Fire Escape], 1978."

One of the things that I’ve noticed that is different today than in the past is that you don’t see kids playing on the street quite like you once did. The idea of the street as a playground is kind of disappearing, but in another sense, you do see photographs today of people on their stoops like it was 100 years ago. So there is certainly life still taking place in public spaces, but it’s just a little bit different than it used to be.

What do you hope that people take away from this exhibition?

SC: I think we hope that people will gain some insight into what life in the city here is like. That’s our mission, to tell the story of New Yorkers and to tell the story of the changing city, the changing people who live here, and the changing modes of life.

We want people to gain a sense of the dynamic city that we often projected out to the world with a certain glossy sheen. Instead, we would like to give a more in-depth, closer look at what life is like here.

Robert Gerhardt, "Children Playing in the Spray from a Fire Hydrant, Myrtle Avenue, Bushwick, Brooklyn, 2010."

📸THIS WEEK'S PHOTO STORIES 📸

In honor of February as Black History Month, our first photo story this week comes to us from the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, where a rare and fascinating collection of pictures captures some of the earliest African American experiences in US history.

Our second photo story is an emotional look at how people around the world are mourning the death of legendary basketball player Kobe Bryant and the eight others killed in Sunday's helicopter crash. Lastly, we journey into the archives this Super Bowl Sunday to see how past generations of football fans have celebrated this unofficial American holiday.

Also, here are more photo essays published by our friends elsewhere.

PICTURES WITH PURPOSE: THE OLDEST PHOTOS FROM BLACK HISTORY

Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture

"We can nonetheless still learn something about people's experiences and in a way recover a past that was too often ignored and misrepresented."

MOURNING A LEGEND: HOW PEOPLE ARE HONORING THE LATE KOBE BRYANT

Chris Pizzello / AP

People around the world are mourning the death of Kobe Bryant after the basketball legend was killed in a California helicopter crash on Sunday, along with his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, and seven other people.

AMERICAN PASTIME: SUPER BOWL SUNDAY THROUGH THE YEARS

Spencer Grant / Getty Images

Since the very first game in 1967, America has been hot with Super Bowl fever.

📸YOUR WEEKLY PALATE CLEANSER📸

Chester Zoo / Reuters

Do not adjust your screen. This super-cute reptilian is in fact a tiny, “fingertip-sized” pygmy chameleon who lives at the Chester Zoo in Cheshire, England. Kudos to the zoo's staff photographer who captured what is perhaps the cutest macro-photograph in history.

"That's it from us this time — see you next week!" —Gabriel and Kate

📝 This letter was edited and brought to you by the News Photo team. Gabriel Sanchez is the photo essay editor based in New York and loves cats. Kate Bubacz is the photo director based in New York and loves dogs. You can always reach us here.
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