December 2020: Cover Search Winners

It’s a good thing photographs are nonfattening and GMO free, because we as a species produce and consume them like potato chips every single day. Yet the best of them have staying power, amplifying our sense of the world, our place in it and our relations to each other. Since 2018, New Jersey Monthly and Unique Photo have invited readers to contribute their favorite images to the magazine’s ongoing portrait of life in the Garden State. Our annual Cover Search is open to amateurs, students and professionals. The challenge: Create a photo, shot in New Jersey, striking enough to command the cover of the December issue. As smart as cameras are today, from professional models to the ones in your phones, they are mere servants of the intuition, empathy and humor people bring to them—qualities on vivid display in these winning photographs.