Japanese artist Mami Kiyoshi has spent 15 years creating vivid portraits of people surrounded by their belongings – from wine bottles and violins to the odd stray pet. Mami Kiyoshi’s ongoing series “New Reading Portraits” is, in part, a nod to the mise-en-scène found in traditional woodcut printing. Here: Sakura and Kazuhiro, Tokyo, 2015. (Photo by Mami Kiyoshi/Galerie Annie Gabrielli/The Guardian)

Women wearing "Shiroshozoku" or the traditional white robe pray as they bathe in ice-cold water at the Teppozu Inari shrine in Tokyo, Japan, January 10, 2016. About 100 participants took part in the Shinto ceremony to purify their souls and wish for good health in the new year. (Photo by Yuya Shino/Reuters)

An image produced by the Hubble telescope of the perfectly “edge-on” galaxy, or NGC 4013, March 1, 2001. This new Hubble picture reveals, with great detail, huge clouds of dust and gas extending along, as well as far above, the galaxy's main disk. NGC 4013 is a spiral galaxy, similar to the Milky Way, lying some 55 million light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Ursa Major. Viewed face-on, it would look like a nearly circular pinwheel, but NGC 4013 happens to be seen edge-on from our vantage point. Even at 55 million light-years, the galaxy is larger than Hubble's field of view, and the image shows only a little more than half of the object, albeit with unprecedented detail. (Photo Courtesy of NASA/Newsmakers)

Documenting the effects of climate change first hand over the past eight years, Camille Seaman fears we may be on the road to the last iceberg. Photographing the enormous frozen floats at both poles for the past eight years, the Californian adventurer has seen the receding ice shelves and experienced the changing warmer weather. Feeling that her intimate and emotional work documents a snapshot of history, Camille presents her series “The Last Iceberg” as a study of what she sees as the personality of each huge iceberg. Drawing parallels with the famous novel, “The Last of the Mohicans”, Camille, 42, wonders whether these unique, almost alien natural features will become a thing of the past or part of nature's renewal process. (Photo by Camille Seaman/Barcroft Media)

A young woman wearing no trousers hits the ski slopes at a ski resort in Xuzhou, in east China's Jiangsu province on January 13, 2015 in a promotional effort to equal “No Pants Subway Ride”, which was marked on January 11 this year. The promotional “No Pants Subway Ride” stunt on January 11 was held as commuters in some 60 cities around the world braved public transportation in their undies, which has gone global since its first staging by US group Improv Everywhere in New York in 2002. (Photo by AFP Photo)

“Muhammed’s work has received many international awards, among others Breaking News Pulitzer Prize of 2005 for covering war in Iraq, POYI, Picture of the year 2007, of Saudi Arabia of the Annual Muslim pilgrimage, best Multimedia of the Annual Israeli photo contest of 2007, honorable mention Atlanta photojournalism seminar of 2008 and photo of the year of the Annual Israeli photo contest of 2008 with two first prizes and two second prizes in different categories, two prizes in the Atlanta photojournalism seminar of 2009, 6 prizes in the Annual Israeli photo contest of 2009”. – Associated Press

A masked Bulgarian dancer takes part in the second competition day of the 24th International Festival of Masquerade Games “Surva” in the town of Pernik, Bulgaria Saturday, January 31, 2015. Some 5,000 people are expected to take part in the three-day festival devoted to an ancient Bulgarian pagan rite. Surva is performed by costumed men, some in sheepskin, or other colorful garments, bells and masks, who walk around and dance to scare away the evil spirits, in hope to provide a good harvest, health, fertility, and happiness. (Photo by Valentina Petrova/AP Photo)

There are many ways to interpret the creations of Yoshitoshi Kanemaki, whose works usually involve sculptures of people where two or more characters have merged into a single being. Possibly, Yoshitoshi Kanemaki is trying to express through his sculptures that everyone’s soul is multifaceted. Good emotions are mixed with the bad, love is mixed with hate, contempt with admiration. How often do you hear that a person loves someone deeply, while doing completely horrendous things, unable to see that he or she is destroying their object of love? Nevertheless, we should be thankful to the nature for all the different emotions that we are able to feel. Unlike animals, who only show simple forms of emotions, such as anger, happiness, and a few others, human soul is much deeper, allowing us to feel a full plethora of emotions. (Photo by Yoshitoshi Kanemaki)