A lonely monkey to the dark side of the Moon: Nine of the most striking images of 2026 so far

An expert's guide to the some of the most eye-catching photographs of the year – and how they echo masterpieces from art history.

1. President Maduro and Cilia Flores's capture

The photo of once-powerful figures, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores – hunched over in handcuffs and escorted by armed Federal agents in early January – was genuinely arresting. The drama of formidable leaders suddenly stripped of their authority, has long fascinated artists, from the Rococo master Tiepolo (who imagined the capture of Queen Zenobia), to the Victorian painter Charles Eastlake, who portrayed Napoleon as a prisoner on board the HMS Bellerophon in Plymouth Sound.

A stunning aerial image of Bagurumba dancers in traditional attire preparing for a Guinness World Record attempt for the largest-ever performance of the Bodo community's "Butterfly Dance" in January at Sarusajai Stadium in Guwahati, Assam, India, blurred the bodies of the the participants into an uninterruptible pattern of tessellating colour. The melting of rhythmic movement into engrossing geometry echoes the ambition of the pioneering abstract artist Piet Mondrian, who left unfinished on his easel when he died in 1944 an absorbing homage to the evaporative power of music, Victory Boogie Woogie.

The photo of a Ukrainian serviceman snatching a plane-shaped reconnaissance drone from the sky above him near the front lines of the war with Russia in January relied for its power on the ingenious perspective of the photojournalist who took it. Snapped from below, with no other object in the image to provide a sense of relative scale, the serviceman appears to be a giant grabbing an aircraft in mid-flight. The seemingly towering figure recalls the terrifying titan in Goya's painting El Coloso (The Colossus), often interpreted as an allegory of the Spanish War of Independence (Peninsular War).  

4. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor arrest

Phil Noble's photograph of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor being driven away from Aylsham police station in Norfolk after his arrest in February quickly seared itself into cultural consciousness. The shocked expression on the former prince's face – having been questioned about his time as the UK's trade representative between 2001 and 2011 – finds little compelling parallel in any poised portraiture in a museum. It does resemble a........

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