The Times's Travel desk launched a new visual series in March 2020 to help readers cope with their confinement. We didn't expect it to last this long, but we called it The World Through a Lens.
We have continued publishing photo essays each Monday morning for the last several years, taking you from the islands of Maine to the synagogues of Myanmar, and nearly 100 other places in between.
We hope the series has given you some solace and a distraction, and maybe even a chance to get away from it all for a bit.
Some of our favorites from the past year are listed below.
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The Glenn Highway skirts the northern edge of the Chugach Mountains and provides a good view of glacier vistas along the way to the town of McCarthy.
The Glenn Highway and the Richardson Highway were the basis of a stunning late-spring road trip for Christopher Miller. He traveled in style, in an R.V., thequintessentially American automobile.
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Christopher Miller for The New York Times is a writer.
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Mayakovskaya is in Moscow.
Frank Herfort visited more than 770 Soviet-era metro stations over the course of two years. The metro systems in a number of cities were either built or substantially altered during the Soviet era, including the metro stations in Bucharest, Budapest and Prague.
His goal? To create a full archive of the metros.
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Botanicheskaya is in Yekaterinburg, Russia.
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Komsomolskaya is in Moscow.
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Kazandra is wearing a dress traditional to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and stands by the family altar.
On the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in southern Mexico, the local Zapotec community has long accepted a group of people who are born male but who adopt roles and identities associated with women.
The photographer Nria Lpez Torres learned about Mexico's muxes, who are broadly considered a third gender, after working on a series of projects about gender identity in Cuba and Brazil.
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A young neighbor is interested in Kazandra's shoes.
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The Weald is an ancient wood that is far from the village of Burwash.
Roff Smith, a travel photographer grounded by the Pandemic, began to bring a camera and tripod with him on his morning bicycle rides, shooting them as though they were magazine assignments.
The challenge of seeing his familiar surroundings through fresh eyes was what began as simply something to do.
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The map is in one of the old-fashioned Edwardian shelters along the seafront promenade in Bexhill-on-Sea.
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A professional ice climber ascends fixed ropes out of a vertical cave on the Greenland ice sheet.
For more than 15 years, the geologist and photographer has explored and mapped glacier caves from Nepal to Greenland, venturing into vast, icy labyrinths to study their relationships with glacier melting and climate change.
The glaciers in the Everest region of Nepal are rotting from the inside out as a result of rising temperatures.
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There are raging waterfalls in the summer. The cooler temperatures of the fall allow for a brief window for glacier cave exploration before moulins become plugged with winter's drifting snow.
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Everest's summit catches the last rays of sunlight, while a pair of researchers drop into a glacier cave on Nepal's Khumbu Glacier. Between 1984 and 2015, the ice surface at the camp fell by 100 feet due to rising temperatures and melt rates.
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merson Santos, known as Daquique, clings to the side of a moving bus.
In the Brazilian city of Olinda, a group of thrill seekers rode on the outside of public buses.
The photographer first learned of the game from a video posted to Facebook. Within an hour, he was talking to the surfers and planning his trip to Olinda.
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A bus surfer hangs onto a rear window frame.
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There are serious dangers to electrical wires.
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There are shadows on a wall in the Greek village of Tetralofo.
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The wall in the Greek village of Tetralofo has Shadows from an annual celebration on it. George Tatakis is credited with the credit.
After a chance encounter in Olympos, the photographer George Tatakis decided to make a project of exploring the unseen corners of his country, to meet the people, learn about their traditional practices and make images along the way.
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The village of Praggi is in the flatlands of northeastern Greece.
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The spindly island of Dn has a neighboring island in the foreground. On the left is Stac Levenish.
The archipelago of St. Kilda, one of the most remote and unforgiving outposts in the British Isles, has fascinated writers, historians, artists, scientists and explorers for centuries. It has a rich cultural heritage, distinctive architecture, and haunting isolation, and it has also had disease, famine, and exile.
Some passengers on the 85-mile boat ride through rough seas were huddling in discomfort when Stephen Hiltner, an editor on the Travel desk, visited the archipelago with his brother and sister. The scenery was beautiful.
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Looking southeast toward the hill known as Oiseval.
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Stephen Hiltner was sitting near the cliffs.
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Stephen Hiltner was departing from the archipelago.
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Ral Laly Fernndez has a plot in the San Pedro Community Gardens.
The San Pedro Community Gardens have provided physical and spiritual sustenance to multiple generations of immigrant Angelenos.
The photographer instantly connected with the expressions of longing for ancestral lands when she discovered the gardens in 2019.
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Isella received her plot at San Pedro in July of 2021. She had to clean up her area before she could start planting.
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Beans are climbing up a set of stakes.
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Mr. Fernndez has roses in his sitting area.
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The site of a World War II plane that crashed near the village of Likan is on the way there.
In 1986, when he was a young boy, the Carillet family moved to Likan, a village near the site of a World War II plane that crashed in the jungle.
His return 33 years later prompted a series of reflections on how the site shaped him, then and now.
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Ricky Muka, who lives in Likan, sits in the rear of the plane.
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A rickshaw is in the center of Kolkata.
One of the few places left in the world where rickshaws still ply the streets is the dense metropolis of Kolkata. Some rickshaw wallahs pull their rickshaws more than 10 miles a day while carrying several hundred pounds.
The men were documented by the photographer while on a scholarship.
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A rickshaw is being pulled from the Indian state of Bihar.
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The man who traveled from Nicaragua to work on Tucker farms used his hatchet in the field.
Eight years ago, Sharrett photographed his first tobacco harvest, driven by his interest in the cultures and traditions of his home state of Kentucky. He has come back each year.
The men from Mexico and Nicaragua work at Tucker farms in the summer, but Americans don't like it. The labor is tiring. There are a few short breaks and a home-cooked lunch on long days.
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A man rests in the rafters of a barn.
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Arkalak and his father are in the Altai Mountains. Arkalak started training his eagle at the age of 10 after following in his father's footsteps.
In the Altai Mountains, where Russia, China, Kazakhstan and Mongolia meet, there is a special bond with golden eagles.
After living and working in northern Iraq for almost three years, the photographer Claire Thomas began working on a personal photography project that drew on her background and affinity with horses.
She flew to western Mongolia to meet and photograph the legendary hunters and herders from the Kazakh empire.
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Baygan, a 72 year old woman, looks out a window.
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Arkalak has an eagle.
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A rider pushes a herd of horses off the mountain.
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The ancient city of Meroe has pyramids and temples.
The pyramids of Meroe, which were built during the 30-year dictatorship of Bashir, were relatively unknown to international visitors.
Sudan was removed from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism after the revolution that led to the ousting of Mr. al- Bashir in 2019.
The ancient city of Meroe in Sudan was visited by the photographer in early 2020.
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The Island of Meroe is comprised of three archaeological sites, including Musawwarat es-Sufra.
The Island of Meroe is comprised of three archaeological sites, one of which is known as Musawwarat es-Sufra.
