To produce the images that convey his fatalistic and ironic approach to life, tinged with hope, he needed the environment and knowledge of Mother Russia, oiled with a bit of bribery to certain circus trainers. Enter the Great Russian Bear, the personification of Russia for the last several centuries, onto center stage and into his studio. The bear is recognized as both brutish and cute – Misha was the mascot for the 1980 Olympic Games – and has remained a symbol of Russia since Tsarist times. In 2009 it is the symbol of the United Russia Party.

“I am not a photo reporter, so I don’t feel obligated to honour every detail. What I’m trying to achieve is to emphasize the whole potential of a shot, creating a sight that I'd like if existed.. And since it’s impossible in real life, I do it in virtual :) My work is maybe more similar to ‘photo-painting’ than photography”. – Katarina Stefanović

Photo: Pannonian spring fantasy. (Photo by by Katarina Stefanović)

Tibetan monks create an intricate picture made from coloured sand at St. Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art on November 23, 2011 in Glasgow, Scotland. The monks, from the Panchen Lama's Monastery, are creating a Sand Mandala as part of a Tantric Buddhist ritual, invoking the presence of the Buddha in a design representing the palace of the deities. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

If life wasn’t exciting enough for these beautiful tortoises, they now get to wear a selection of fantastic knitted suits. They made a very slow sashay down the catwalk to showcase the talents of Katie Bradley. She has made cute woolly suits from 25 designs to transform the little animals into a shark, a lobster, a burrito, a burger, bumble bee and a birthday cake.

“Animals take on human characteristics in this photo series by Davide Luciano. Davide’s goal was to achieve personification of these animals’ body parts without the use of motion. Using photography’s ability to manipulate time, Davide presents a snippet of these creature “active” lives by photographing a process, thus creating the illusion of life in these lifeless animal limbs. Recreating the uncomfortable into quizzical and whimsical photos that are bold, colorful, and always comical and satirical”. (Photos and caption by Davide Luciano)

René Maltête was a French photographer and poet. His pictures were based on the element of surprise and incongruity, often having a humorous and even philosophical side to them. At the start of his career, he often had to resort to manual labor as an addition to his to his profession in order to pay the bills. However, René's talent of seeing and being able to capture in time humorous moment of mundane, day-to-day life payed off in the end. Over the years, his works were published in a number of magazines in addition to numerous exhibitions that were held worldwide to popularize his work. (Photo by René Maltête)

A working team appointed by the Archaeological Superintendence of Pompeii performs a Cat scan (Computerized axial tomography) one out of thirty casts of victims of the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD in Pompeii, in Napoli, Italy, 29 September 2015. The project which aims to trace the habits of life, employment and social class of the victims, involves a working team of archeologists, anthropologists, radiologists, dentists and engineers to obtain results from the scan. (Photo by Cesare Abbate/EPA)