2009 | The Year In Pictures (28 images)

Buy Slideshow Download
View: 50 | All
A selection of noteworthy photographs by Independent Weekly photographers Jeremy M. Lange and D.L. Anderson throughout the year that was 2009.
  • Thousands of fans took to the streets of Chapel Hill on April 6, 2009, to celebrate the UNC men's basketball team after they defeated Michigan State 89-72 to win the 2009 NCAA Championship Tournament..

  • Thousands of people congregated on the National Mall in Washington D.C. on Jan. 19, 2009, to celebrate the day before the inauguration of Barack Obama. Many posed for photos with a cardboard cutout of the new president.

  • Herbert and Zelmyra Fisher have been married 85 years and hold the Guinness World Record for the longest marriage of a living couple. Zelmyra is 101 years old; Herbert turned 105 this year. The couple, pictured here in their living room Aug. 14, have shared the same home in the Brownsville community of New Bern for 50 years.

  • Tobacco field in Newton Grove, N.C. Once the backbone of the state's agricultural history, tobacco farming has weathered significant changes with a general decrease in the U.S. smoking population and an greater influx of the international tobacco markets. There are fewer small tobacco farms, but around 255,000 North Carolinians still are employed in the tobacco trade.

  • Earlier this year, the N.C. House of Representatives passed a bill banning smoking in restaurants, including Honey's in Durham, N.C. "We've got two more cig machines in the back," said the night manager, puffing on a Newport at four in the morning. "I guess we can sell 'em on Ebay as antiques.".

  • Pastor Brady Blade sings during a dress rehearsal for the making of the live album Hallelujah Train at the Hayti Heritage Center in Durham, N.C., Oct. 8, 2009. Pastor Blade's son, Brian, devised the gospel recording project with legendary producer Danny Lanois and Duke Performances; brining Blade, his family and the talented choir and musicians of Shreveport Louisiana's Zion Baptist Church to record in Durham.

  • Employee Chris Jackson looks over construction tools brought into the The Trading Post pawn shop near Butner, NC, June 17, 2009. There has been a big increase in pawned construction tools according to owner Denise Pipkin.

  • Dan McGee and Gregg Levy of Spider Bags enjoy themselves at a Carrboro, N.C., swimming pool.

  • Chatham County Commissioner Tom Vanderbeck is a major proponent for the improvement of rural internet access; pictured here in a pasture near his home outside Pittsboro, N.C., Feb. 11, 2009.

  • A defense attorney speaks on behalf of the family of accused terror suspect Mohammad Omar Aly Hassan minutes after the 22-year-old was denied bond during a hearing at the federal court house in Raleigh, N.C., Aug. 5, 2009. Hassan's father, Aly, later said, "All the family is disappointed, there's nothing else I can say."

  • Headed for Iraq: A deployment ceremony is held Dec. 13, 2008, at Cape Fear Christian Academy in Erwin, N.C., for B Company 230th Brigade Support Battalion headquartered in Dunn. The unit is part of the North Carolina National Guard's 30th Heavy Brigade Combat Team. The 30th was last deployed to Iraq in 2003-2005.

  • The outgoing Queen Fishcenta, prior to her big finish at the Fifth Annual Beaver Queen Pageant, June 6, 2009.

  • Several soldiers of the North Carolina National Guard's 30th Brigade Heavy Combat pass the time before departure for a 12 month tour in Iraq playing spades at Pope Air Force Base, April 16, 2009.

  • Jillian Gee wanders through an exhibit depicting United States Army soldiers fighting on the streets of Baghdad, Iraq, inside the Airborne & Special Operations Museum in Fayetteville, NC. Gee's father, Ken, is on active duty with the 82nd Airborne and has been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan for three tours.

  • Sign of the times: Best Buy in North Raleigh.

  • Members of the trust-fund troupe Billionaires for Wealth Care roll out the red carpet in defense of the status quo outside a informational health care forum in Raleigh, Aug. 26, 2009. The group, organized by local activist Chase Foster, provided a comedic parody of the hyperbolic vitriol of tea baggers at anti-reform rallies across the nation. "We said, 'Tell us your disease.' Then we invited them to walk it off on the red carpet, which was fun," Foster explains, "and we offered them an Advil. That was our answer to health care--walk it off!"

  • A prayer and a phone call before the N.C. Senate convenes on the last day of the 2009 legislative session.

  • Effigies of Duplin County and North Carolina elected officials are display outside the Clarion Hotel in Raleigh, Oct. 27, 2009. The State Board of Elections was conducting a hearing into the campaign finances of former Gov. Mike Easley. The effigies were not related to the hearing, but to a Duplin County land dispute outlined in a diatribe written by Lacy M. Phipps.

  • Durham H.E.N.S. supporter Jenny Palmer reacts to the unanimous decision by the Durham City Council, Feb. 16, 2009, to pass an ordanance allowing citizens the right to raise chickens in their backyard.

  • Farmworkers wrench on their van at a camp outside Wilson, N.C. in preperation for an all-night drive to Kentucky where the promise of more work awaits.

  • Pastor Sherry Farrington of the Ark of Safety storefront church in Durham, N.C., conducts an altar call, Aug. 23, 2009, which is the first step to being welcomed into the church.

  • Pitching ace David Price, the number one draft pick for the Tampa Devil Rays, played for The Durham Bulls for the first part of the 2009 season before being called up for the Big Show.

  • Recent Sports Illustrated cover subject, 16-year-old baseball phoneme Bryce Harper, conducts a radio interview June 24, 2009, at the USA Baseball National Training Complex in Cary.

  • Eighteenth-century trade fair and French-Indian War re-enactment at Fort Dobbs in Statesvill, N.C., Oct. 3, 2009.

  • Charles Smith looks for bargains among the nearly empty shelves of the Book Exchange on Jan. 28, 2009. After many years as a downtown Durham, N.C., landmark, the Book Exchange closed its doors permanently in February.

  • Hundreds of Michael Jackson fans of gathered at The Raleigh Convention Center July 7, 2009, to remember the late King of Pop and watch the memorial service broadcast live from the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

  • Sunset on the train tracks running through downtown Durham, N.C.

  • The last picture show at the Varsity Theater on Franklin St. in Chapel Hill, June 25, 2009.