Beauty contestants prepare backstage before the fashion show of Miss Tiffany's Universe 2016 transvestite contest in Bangkok, Thailand, April 20, 2016. (Photo by Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters)

A beauty contestant waits backstage during the final of the annual Miss Tiffany's Universe 2016 transvestite contest in the beach resort town of Pattaya, Thailand, May 13, 2016. (Photo by Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters)

A woman wearing a face mask has her hair curled by a special equipment at a beauty salon in Bangkok on July 12, 2020. (Photo by Mladen Antonov/AFP Photo)

English model and actress Cara Delevingne attends The 2023 Met Gala Celebrating “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line Of Beauty” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 01, 2023 in New York City. (Photo by John Shearer/WireImage)

Miss Seychelles Gabriella Gonthier walks through the crowd with fellow contestants for the start of the final round of the 71st Miss Universe Beauty Pageant in New Orleans Saturday, January 14, 2023. (Photo by Gerald Herbert/AP Photo)

This strange coral-looking specimen is actually a mushroom. The photo, “Beautiful Destroyer”, was taken in the Panamanian tropical rainforest where the mushroom produces nitrogen, an element vital to soil health. (Photo by Sarah A. Batterman)

Sabine Pearlman‘s photographs find beauty in the destructive engineering of ammunition with this series of cross-sections of bullets cartridges from a Swiss bunker. They reveal the complexity inside each case. This series, which consists of 900 specimens, was photographed inside a WWII bunker in Switzerland. Pearlman says that she is intrigued by the beautiful complexity of the ammo set against its destructive purpose, at once showing off humanity’s ability to create and destroy.

First place, The Beauty of Plants. “There are many stages of lotus growth on display at the Aquatic Gardens, but to come across twotwisted dancing stems of nelumbo nucifera was unexpected and quite magical”. (Photo by Kathleen Furey/The Guardian)