Helping Uncover a Closed World

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In March 2020, as quarantines took effect around the world, The Times’ Travel desk launched a new visual series to help readers cope with the quarantine. we called The World Through a Lens – and frankly, we didn’t expect it to take this long.

But as weeks turned into months and months into years, we continued to post photo essays every Monday morning, and we’ve got you almost – almost – maine islands for Myanmar synagogues, and about 100 other places in between.

We hope the series offers you some solace and some distraction throughout the pandemic, and perhaps a chance to immerse, for a moment, in a distant place or culture that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Below are some of our favorite World Through the Lens trials from the past year.


For photographer Christopher Miller, who lives in Juneau, Alaska, two roads – the Glenn Highway and the Richardson Highway – formed the backbone of a dizzying trip in late spring. And instead of sacrificing comfort, he traveled in style: in a campervan that was essentially an American car.

“Until a jolt in the road brought me back to my reality, I looked out the window at the late spring vegetation surrounding the Matanuska River Valley: I was staggering and swaying on the road with the equivalent of a fertile circle. as a backseat passenger.”

Christopher Miller

Read more about RV life on the Alaska Highway →


Between 2014 and 2020, Frank Herfort visited more than 770 Soviet-era metro stations, including stations in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia and Uzbekistan. He also visited a handful of cities that were built or significantly altered during the Soviet era, including metro stations in Bucharest, Budapest, and Prague, although their metro systems are not officially attributed to the Soviet Union.

Its purpose? To create an archive of subways as close as possible.

On the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in southern Mexico, the local Zapotec community has long recognized and celebrated a group of people known as mux, who were born male but adopted roles and identities associated with women.

Photographer Núria López Torres first learned about Mexican muxes, which are generally considered a third gender, after working on a number of projects related to gender identity in Cuba and Brazil.

In 2020, Roff Smith, a photographer traveling due to the pandemic, started bringing a camera and tripod with him on his morning bike rides, shooting them like magazine assignments.

What started as a simple thing to do – a challenge to try to see familiar surroundings with fresh eyes – soon turned into a celebration of travel close to home.

Geologist and photographer Jason Gulley has explored and mapped glacial caves from Nepal to Greenland for over 15 years, delving into vast, icy labyrinths to study glacier melting and their relationship to climate change.

Among their findings: Rising temperatures inside glaciers in Nepal’s Everest region are creating caves that rot the glaciers from the inside out.

In Olinda, Brazil, a group of thrill-seekers take up an illegal and death-defying hobby: riding outside of public buses.

Photographer Victor Moriyama first learned about the fun through a video posted on Facebook. He was texting surfers in an hour and planning his trip to Olinda.

“During my week-long visit with bus surfers in 2017, I felt happy and free. In a way, they let me go back to my roots: I also engaged in some risky and extreme behavior when I was growing up in São Paulo.”

Victor Moriyama

Read more about Brazilian bus surfers →

Photographer George Tatakis, after accidentally becoming intrigued by traditional Greek clothing in Olympos, decided to embark on a project to explore the unseen corners of his country – meeting people, learning about their traditional practices, and painting pictures along the way.

“To me, photography is much more than the images themselves. I have a passion for rural Greece and enjoy exploring the concept of xenia, or hospitality, a central virtue that goes back to ancient Greece.”

George Tatakis

Read more about Greece’s vibrant traditional culture →


One of the most remote and brutal outposts in the British Isles, St. The Kilda archipelago has sparked the imagination of writers, historians, artists, scientists and adventurers for centuries. It is filled with fascinating history, a rich cultural heritage, distinctive architecture and haunting isolation – not to mention disease, famine and exile.

When Stephen Hiltner, editor at the travel desk, visited the archipelago with his brother and sister, the 85-mile boat ride through the choppy seas made some passengers squirm uncomfortably. But the windy landscape was otherworldly.

Emerging like a mirage from their surroundings, the San Pedro Community Gardens have provided physical and spiritual nourishment to many generations of migratory Angelenos for decades.

When photographer Stella Kalinina discovered the gardens in 2019, she instantly connected with expressions of longing for their ancestral land.

“As a Russian-Ukrainian American who moved to the United States at a young age and later married a second-generation Mexican American, I find myself drawn to stories of immigration, broken ties, my own culture, and a longing to build new homes.”

Stella Kalinina

Read more about San Pedro Community Gardens →

Joel Carillet, whose family moved to Papua New Guinea to work for a Bible translation organization, died in 1986, when he was 12 years old, after a World War II accident that fell into the forest near the village of Likan. Visited the site of World War II aircraft.

His return, nearly 33 years later, sparked a series of thoughts in the various ways the site – and his experiences in Papua New Guinea as a child – have shaped him then and now.

The busy metropolis of Kolkata is one of the only places in India where fleets of hand-pulled rickshaws still roam the streets – and one of the few in the world. The men who run them are called rickshaw wallahs; some haul their rickshaws more than 10 miles a day while carrying several hundred pounds.

Photographer Emilienne Malfatto documented these men and their work on a photography workshop scholarship.

“Squeegee wallahs do not make a living by serving tourists. Its customers are mostly local Kolkataans: shoppers commuting to the markets or residents passing through the narrow alleys of the city.”

Emilienne Malfatto

Read more about rickshaw wallahs of Kolkata →


Drawing on his interest in the cultures and traditions of his home state of Kentucky, Luke Sharett photographed the first tobacco harvest eight years ago. It has eagerly returned every year since then.

At Tucker Farms in Shelby County, 25 men from Nicaragua and one man from Mexico do grueling seasonal jobs that Americans largely avoid. Labor is physical, repetitive, and tiring. Long days end with a few short breaks and a lunch of homemade beans and rice.

Deep in the Altai Mountains, where Russia, China, Kazakhstan and Mongolia meet, Kazakh people have developed and nurtured a special bond with golden eagles for centuries.

In October 2019, after living and working in northern Iraq for nearly three years, photographer Claire Thomas began working on a personal photography project that outlined her background and her affinity with horses.

flew west to begin Mongolia to meet and photograph iconic Kazakh hunters, horsemen and herdsmen.

“From the outside, documenting traditional ways of life in Western Mongolia is in stark contrast to the time I’ve spent photographing scenes of conflict and suffering in Iraq. But the two themes share a common theme: man’s struggle not just to survive, but to build a better future for himself and his family.”

Claire Thomas

Learn more about the Kazakh eagle hunter in Western Mongolia →

Along 30 years of dictatorship The Meroe pyramids, which belonged to Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who swept Sudan through a long series of wars and famines, saw few international visitors and remained relatively unknown.

But after the revolution that led The dismissal of Mr. Al-Bashir in 2019 and removal of Sudan From the United States’ list of states that sponsor terrorism, the country’s archaeological sites are finally poised to receive more attention and protection.

In early 2020, photographer Alessio Mamo traveled to Sudan to visit the ancient city of Meroe, whose pyramids were built between 2700 and 2300 years ago.

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