2021 was a banner year for Rebeca Andrade. At the Tokyo Olympics, the 22-year old gymnast won a Silver medal in one event. Then, almost immediately after, she took the Gold in another. She is the first Brazilian woman to win either.

Andrade's graceful moves were over in seconds. But, thanks to a photographer, they have been captured forever. Laurence Griffith's photograph shows Andrade gliding through the air like an egretA heron with a beautiful white plumage, which grows during mating season., her face the picture of calm.

On Monday, Griffith's image was picked as one of the year's top 25 news photographs by The Atlantic: a magazine world famous for its photos of current affairs.

This year's collection captures the full spectrum of human experience. Some of them are joyful: one incredible image shows a 98-year old women seeing her family for the first time after a year of lockdown. Many more show moments of trauma, whether a Greek villager fleeing from a forest fire or a US Border Control guard trying to catch a would-be migrant. 

These images are beautiful. They grip emotions. And they tell stories about life on Earth today. They are what the great American photographer Ansel Adams(1902 - 1984), an American photographer famous for his black and white images of the American West. described as "an austere and blazing poetry of the real".

But not everyone sees photography as art. The debate is almost as old as cameras themselves. In an early meeting of the Photography Society of London, founded 1853, one member claimed that the new technology was "too literal" to compete with paintings. 

For over a century after, photography was deemed less than art, and kept out of museums and galleries.

In part, this was because photos were often used for adverts and other lowbrow mediums. But it was also because they required less work. A painting is the product of thought and the human hand, carefully crafted by an artist. It has a material depth.

Photographs, by contrast, are taken by the camera, a type of machine. They are created instantly: just click a button and, presto, you have a photo. And they are flat. As controversial art critic Jonathan Jones says: "It is all there on the surface."

Many disagree with Jones. A paintbrush is as much of a tool as a camera. To become a great photographer requires its own combination of skill and talent. If you gave an unskilled amateur the world's most high-tech camera, it is unlikely that they would come up with anything rivalling Walker Evans(1903 - 1975), American photojournalist who captured the ravages of the Great Depression. or Dorothea Lange(1895 - 1965), American photographer. Her portrait Migrant Mother (1936) is one of the best-known photographs ever taken..

Photos have the power to change the world. Neil Armstrong's pictures of the moon landing allowed us a glimpse beyond Earth. A shocking shot of a drowned Syrian child became a symbol of the refugee crisis.

Paintings have managed this too: Pablo Picasso's GuernicaAn enormous painting that depicts the bombing of the Spanish village Guernica by Nazi Germany. After it was exhibited in Paris, it became internationally famous. (1937) alerted outsiders to the horrors of the Spanish Civil WarA bloody conflict between 1936 and 1939 that saw Spain's right-wing Nationalist faction rebel against the left-wing Republican government. The Nationalists won, with support from Europe's fascist regimes.. Yet photos have the advantage here. They can be copied, printed and spread to millions of people - while paintings remain trapped in one place.

Obviously, say some. In fact, photography is even more creative than painting. Painters can pull magical scenes out of thin air - and do so at their own pace. But photographers are forced to find the extraordinary in the world as it is, often in a snap moment. If that is not art, nothing is.

Not even close, say others. A great artwork is a one-off, uniquely valuable thing. It exerts a pull. People flock to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa and to the Vatican to see the Sistine Chapel. Photos have a power of their own. But they never have the sheer presence of the finest artworks.