Luna the French Bulldog is dressed in red, white, and blue during the National Independence Day Parade in Washington, DC, on July 4, 2023. (Photo by Stefani Reynolds/AFP Photo)

British-French actress Emma Mackey attends the Saint Laurent Womenswear Spring/Summer 2024 show as part of Paris Fashion Week on September 26, 2023 in Paris, France. (Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)

What do superheroes do when they’re not busy fighting bad guys and saving the world from destruction? Perhaps they’re drawing strength alone in the peace and quiet of the great outdoors. That’s the premise of French photographer Benoit Lapray‘s photo-manipulation series “The Quest for the Absolute.”

“Josephine Baker (June 3, 1906 – April 12, 1975) was an American-born French dancer, singer, and actress. Nicknamed the “Bronze Venus”, the “Black Pearl”, and even the “Créole Goddess” in anglophone nations.

Baker was the first African American female to star in a major motion picture and to integrate an American concert hall, and to become a world-famous entertainer. She is also noted for her contributions to the Civil Rights Movement in the United States (she was offered the unofficial leadership of the movement by Coretta Scott King in 1968 following Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, but turned it down), for assisting the French Resistance during World War II and for being the first American-born woman to receive the French military honor, the Croix de guerre”.

Photo: American entertainer Josephine Baker in costume for her famous “banana dance”. Baker was an overnight sensation when she arrived in Paris in the mid-1920s. (Photo by Walery/Getty Images)

Pedestrians look at a Maurician oil tanker Tresta Star stranded on Tremblet coast in Saint-Philippe, south-east of the French Indian Ocean island of La Reunion, on February 4, 2022 after the passage of the tropical cyclone Batsirai as the island was placed under a cyclonic red alert. (Photo by Richard Bouhet/AFP Photo)

Sweden's Mikael Ymer slips and falls in the first round match of the French Open tennis tournament against Serbia's Novak Djokovic at the Roland Garros stadium in Paris, France, Tuesday, September 29, 2020. (Photo by Alessandra Tarantino/AP Photo)

A woman looks at cows on the Mare e Sol beach in Coti-Chiavari, on the French Mediterranean island of Corsica, on May 17, 2017. A herd of some thirty wild cattle take up their summer residence on stretch of beach each year. (Photo by Pascal Pochard-Casabianca/AFP Photo)

French mounted bullfighter Lea Vicens is gored by her first bull and falls off her horse during the 31st day of the San Isidro bullfighting festival at Las Ventas bullring in Madrid, Spain, 10 June 2017. (Photo by Victor Lerena/EPA)