People walk past the 23-foot “Unitled (LAMP/BEAR)” outdoor sculpture of a teddy bear by artist Urs Fischer April 8, 2011 in New York City. The 35,000 pound sculpture of a yellow teddy bear with a working lamp will be on display for five months in front of the Seagram Building in Manhattan. The sculpture is expected to sell for more than $10 million at Christie’s Post-War & Contemporary Evening Sale on May 11. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Thai residents party after sunset in the water on a flooded street along the swollen Yom river August 24, 2011 Phinchit, Thailand. The death toll has climbed to over 37 as 13 provinces remain flooded with 1.5 million affected. In Phinchit 110,000 people's homes have been flooded by nearby overflowing rivers. (Photo by Paula Bronstein /Getty Images)

Fireworks explode over the Quadriga statue atop the Brandenburg Gate on New Year's Eve on January 1, 2012 in Berlin, Germany. According to the media, up to one million people celebrate the country's biggest New Year's Eve Party. (Photo by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)

Venus Isabelle Palermo (born 8 February 1997), better known as VenusAngelic, is a Swiss-born YouTube personality, known for her doll-like appearance and fashion sense. Her YouTube channel has more than 120 million views, nearly 800,000 subscribers and 160 uploaded videos.

Participants wearing costumes take part in the West Indian Day Parade in the Brooklyn borough of New York September 1, 2014. The parade, which draws a crowd of a million plus, celebrates Caribbean culture. (Photo by Eric Thayer/Reuters)

When you first see the art works created by a Thai metalworker Ban Hun Lek, you are completely stunned by the level of detail of the metal sculptures that he creates. One of his most prominent creations is a full sized sculpture of a Hulk. The fact that this sculpture was created practically solely out of steel nuts adds to the rugged feeling of force that emanates from this creation. And if you think that this creation is amazing, you should look at his other works such as the Ganesha – the god of wisdom, knowledge and new beginnings, or the Predator. For that matter, almost every sculpture that he creates blows your mind away, making you wonder just how many hours has he put into making these amazing pieces of art. (Photo by BanHunLek)

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)

While communism, collectivism, worms, dry rot and casual looting failed to destroy the majestic wooden churches of Russia, it may be ordinary neglect that finally does them in. Dwindled now to several hundred remaining examples, these glories of vernacular architecture lie scattered amid the vastness of the world’s largest country. Just over a decade ago, Richard Davies, a British architectural photographer, struck out on a mission to record the fragile and poetic structures. Austerely beautiful and haunting, “Wooden Churches: Traveling in the Russian North” (White Sea Publishing; $132) is the result. Covering thousands of miles, Mr. Davies described how he and the writer Matilda Moreton tracked down the survivors from among the thousands of onion-domed structures built after Prince Vladimir converted to Christianity in 988.