New York has the fourth-largest population of any U.S. state, and is home to the most populous city in the country, New York City. From Buffalo, through the Finger Lakes, to the Hudson Valley, Manhattan, and more, here are a few glimpses of the landscape of New York, and some of the wildlife and people calling it home.This photo story is part of Fifty, a collection of images from each of the United States.An earlier version of this photo essay misidentified the location of one of the photos.

America is loose as a gooseIt avoided becoming Belarus.But that sulking Caesar, POTUS—where’s he gone?Is he watching Fox News with a big frown on?We’ll seize the cycle. We’ll make allegations.Reverse these numerical humiliations.A major press conference, that’s the thing.At the Four Seasons … Total Landscaping.So the gods of bathos displayed us allon pickled asphalt, by a lumpy green wall.

Dave Chappelle had the same thing on his mind when he came out onto the Saturday Night Live stage in 2016 and 2020, both times hosting the show right after the U.S. presidential election. “Don’t forget all the things that are going on … all these shootings in the last year,” he said in 2016, invoking the massacre at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub.

Not 20 minutes into The Vow, HBO’s enthralling-then-ultimately-gasbaggy docuseries, things started to feel concerningly familiar to me. Sarah Edmondson—an engaging Canadian actor with big valedictorian energy who had joined the Albany-based organization NXIVM (pronounced nex-ee-um)—was describing how she was first drawn into a group that she would later expose as a sex cult. Edmondson’s career had stalled, and she was looking for a sign from the universe.