“Natural History” is a series of completely candid single exposure images that merge the living and the dead to create allegorical narratives of our troubled co-existence with nature. Ghost-like reflections of modern visitors viewing wildlife dioramas are juxtaposed against the antique taxidermied subjects housed behind thick glass, their faces molded into permanent expressions of fear, aggression or fleeting passivity. After decades of over-hunting, climate change, poaching and destruction of habitat, many of these long dead diorama specimens now represent endangered or completely extinct species”. – Traer Scott. (Photo by Traer Scott)

Syrians try to rescue a dead body under the debris of a collapsed building after Syrian and Russian army carried out an airstrike on opposition controlled residential area at Merce neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria on September 23, 2016. (Photo by Jawad al Rifai/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

A girl walks in front of a graffiti painted on the wall of a house located inside the 15th-century complex built by Mameluk Sultan al-Ashraf Qaitbey, in Cairo's City of the Dead, Egypt February 13, 2017. (Photo by Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters)

A student falls asleep as she holds a book containing a portrait of China's late chairman Mao Zedong during a lesson at the Democracy Elementary and Middle School in Sitong town, Henan province December 3, 2013. In a remote part of central China, the day starts at the Democracy Elementary and Middle School with a pre-dawn jog, some revolutionary songs and then an activity long since forgotten at other schools: reciting quotations from Mao Zedong's famed “Little Red Book”. While the ruling Communist Party that Mao led continues to hold him in esteem as the leader of the Communist Revolution, his radical policies and teachings have been largely shelved since his death in 1976 in favour of a pro-market approach that has turned China from a backwater into the world's second biggest economy. The 120th anniversary of Mao's birth is on December 26, 2013. (Photo by Carlos Barria/Reuters)

A dead green sea turtle is collected from the beach at the Khor Kalba Conservation Reserve, in the city of Kalba, on the east coast of the United Arab Emirates, Tuesday, February 1, 2022. A staggering 75% of all dead green turtles and 57% of all loggerhead turtles in Sharjah had eaten marine debris, including plastic bags, bottle caps, rope and fishing nets, a new study published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin. The study seeks to document the damage and danger of the throwaway plastic that has surged in use around the world and in the UAE, along with other marine debris. (Photo by Kamran Jebreili/AP Photo)

An Anti-Balaka fighter, member of a militia opposed to the Seleka rebel group, puts a knife to his throat showing what he would do to any Seleka, on the outskirts of the Boy-Rabe neighborhood in Bangui on December 14, 2013. France raised alarm on December 13 over worsening violence in the Central African Republic, as UN chief Ban Ki-moon urged warring Christians and Muslims to stop the bloodshed that has left more than 600 dead in the past week. (Photo by Ivan Lieman/AFP Photo)

Herring worth millions in exports float dead in Kolgrafafjordur, a small fjord on the northern part of Snaefellsnes peninsula, west Iceland, for the second time in two months. Between 25,000 and 30,000 tons of fish died in December and more now, due to lack of oxygen in the fjord thought to have been caused by a landfill and bridge constructed across the fjord in December 2004. The current export value of the estimated 10,000 tons of herring amounts to $ 9.8 million, according to the newspaper “Morgunbladid”. (Photo by Brynjar Gauti/Associated Press)

Merit: A Night at Deadvlei. The night before returning to Windhoek, we spent several hours at Deadveli. The moon was bright enough to illuminate the sand dunes in the distance, but the skies were still dark enough to clearly see the milky way and magellanic clouds. Deadveli means “dead marsh. The camelthorn trees are believed to be about 900 years old, but have not decomposed because the environment is so dry. (Photo and caption by Beth McCarley/National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest)