The year in people: our 12 favorite Saturday profiles of 2023

The year in people: our 12 favorite Saturday profiles of 2023

A teenager imprisoned in Egypt, determined to bear witness to the abuse he suffered during years of detention. A defender of peace in Colombia, overshadowed by death threats. A father in India who fights against his own patriarchal impulses to give his two daughters a better life.

With reports from six continents and 34 countries, Saturday’s 2023 profile revealed people making a difference, mostly unnoticed. Each week, our correspondents often sought out not the famous or the powerful, but the unknown with stories worth hearing.

A Muslim cleric in Ukraine, now a doctor on the front lines of the war. An anti-corruption whistleblower in Bangkok, with (he would be the first to admit) a disreputable past. Scientist and owner of a hair salon in Paris, dedicated to curly hair styling.

Some of our subjects talked about major news trends, such as Africa’s first heat officer; a former fisherman dedicated to persuading his fellow Senegalese not to emigrate to Europe; and a rap producer in France, who lost his voice to ALS and was experimenting with artificial intelligence to replace it.

Johannes Fritz once showed endangered ibises the migratory path over the Alps with an ultralight plane. Due to climate change, he decided that he had to use the same innovative method to show them a much longer route to a winter refuge, or the birds, which had once been completely extinct in the wild, would disappear a second time.

“In two or three years they would be extinct again,” Fritz said.

— By Denise Hruby, photographs by Nina Riggio

Lisa LaFlamme was fired after a decades-long television career, shortly after she stopped dying her hair, sparking debates across Canada about sexism, ageism and gray hair.

“The majority of the comments I received were not during months in Baghdad or Afghanistan, or any story, but when I let my hair grow gray, without exception,” LaFlamme said. “And I will say this, 98 percent positive, except for a couple of men and one woman (it’s funny I can actually remember that), but they were summarily destroyed on social media because women do support women.”

— By Norimitsu Onishi, photographs by Ian Willms

Standing on stage in a dark auditorium in front of 2,000 fans in central Tokyo, Shinjiro Atae, a J-pop idol, revealed something he has kept hidden for most of his life: he is gay.

“I don’t want people to have difficulties like me,” Atae said, making an announcement that is extremely unusual in conservative Japan.

— By Motoko Rich and Hikari Hida, photos by Noriko Hayashi

After filming her role in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” María Mercedes Coroy returned to her life of farming and commerce in a Guatemalan town at the foot of a volcano.

“People ask me what I do after filming,” Coroy said. “I’m back to normal.”

— By Julia Lieblich, photographs by Daniele Volpe

After 17 years in France, Tharshan Selvarajah has not yet applied for citizenship. But he has made bread for President Emmanuel Macron.

He said it’s his hands that make his bread special.

“My mother’s chicken curry and my wife’s chicken curry may use the same chicken, but they don’t taste the same,” he said. “God gave me the hands to make the best baguette in France! “I never get upset with the flour while kneading the dough.”

— By Roger Cohen, photographs by Dmitry Kostyukov

Fighting for change has cost Narges Mohammadi her career, separated her from her family, and deprived her of her freedom. But a jail cell has not silenced her.

“I sit in front of the window every day, looking at the greenery and dreaming of a free Iran,” Mohammadi said in a rare, unauthorized telephone interview from inside Tehran’s Evin prison. “The more they punish me, the more they take from me, the more determined I am to fight until we achieve democracy and freedom and nothing less.”

In October, four months after this profile was published, Narges won the Nobel Peace Prize.

— By Farnaz Fassihi

Moha Alshawamreh is among the few Palestinians working in Israel’s tech industry. His journey shows both the inequalities of life in the West Bank and an exception to them.

“My message is that we should learn more from each other,” Alshawamreh said. “Break the walls, talk, put ourselves in each other’s shoes and see ourselves as two traumatized people.”

(This profile was published in March, seven months before a Hamas-led attack on Israel led to a war in Gaza.)

— By Patrick Kingsley, photographs by Laura Boushnak

South Korean writer Hwang In-suk feeds stray cats on his nightly walks through Seoul. Routine informs his poems about loneliness and impermanence.

“I’ve found worlds that I wouldn’t have found if I hadn’t been feeding the cats at night,” he said during a recent evening walk.

— By Mike Ives, photos by Jun Michael Park

Dan Carter was on the streets for 17 years. His experience informs his political agenda as mayor of Oshawa, Ont., a city of 175,000 battling overdoses and affordability.

“For 17 years, I was an absolutely horrible person,” Carter said of his years as an addict. “Horrible individual. “I lied, I cheated, I stole.”

— By Ian Austen, photographs by Ian Willms

For his fellow exiles, Sadiq Fitrat Nashenas, an 88-year-old star singer from a golden age, evokes the Afghanistan they left behind, and that could have been.

“I was just trying to hold on to my music, because music takes me to God, to the heavens,” he said before taking the stage for a recent concert, his first public performance in almost 20 years. “Life without music is a mistake.”

— By Mujib Mashal, photographs by Jim Huylebroek

Nomcebo Zikode, the South African singer of the pandemic hit “Jerusalema” that inspired a global dance challenge, wrote the chorus while battling her own depression.

“As if there was a voice telling him that he should commit suicide,” Zikode said, describing his depression at the time. “I remember talking to myself saying, ‘No, I can’t kill myself. I have to raise my children. I can’t, I can’t do that.’”

— By Lynsey Chutel, photographs by Alexia Webster

Being leader of Kherson may seem more like a curse than an honor. But one woman doesn’t give up, even though the Russians are sitting across the river and bombing her city almost every hour.

“If I could disappear into thin air and end this war, I would,” said Halyna Luhova, the mayor. “I would easily sacrifice myself to put an end to this hell.”

— By Jeffrey Gettleman, photographs by Ivor Prickett