Night lovers; Hormozgan province, Iran. “In this picture, you can see the Milky Way rising on a fascinating spring night on the Persian Gulf coast. The stunning cliffs of this area make every viewer imagine and even talk to them! The light pollution from a faraway city was quite strong, so it was a challenging post-processing process. I’m a nightscaper who tries to achieve an artistic look in my images, and in this image, I tried to convey and capture the magic of this location”. (Photo by Mohammad Hayati/Milky Way Photographer of the Year)

Photographer Joana Choumali’s latest project explores body image and beauty by documenting the men building Abidjan’s clothing models. The “Awoulaba” mannequin is a customised model designed with the African ideal of beauty in mind, curvier than the stick-thin examples usually seen in the west. They first appeared in 2011, and have since become a familiar sight outside the numerous clothing shops dotted throughout Ivory Coast’s capital, Abidjan. Here: An apprentice lines up his work on a roadside. (Photo by Joana Choumali)

A thrill-seeking photographer risked life and limb as he swam alongside a ten-foot-long American crocodile near Belize. Stunning pictures show Mexican underwater photographer Rodrigo Friscione getting up close and personal with the two-hundred-pound predator. (Photo by Rodrigo Friscione/Mediadrumwor.com)

Belly dancer Nagwa Fouad sailing on the river Nile, 1972. Egypt is one of 23 countries represented at the Dubai Photo Exhibition, showing off photography that dates to the 1920s. Dubai Photo Exhibition is in various venues of Dubai’s design district from 16-19 March. (Photo by Farouk Ibrahim)

With the humpback calving season drawing to a close, here’s a look at some of Rita Kluge’s distinctive marine photos from the south Pacific. The Sydney-based photographer fell in love with whales after witnessing southern rights from the New South Wales coastline as they travelled to and from their feeding grounds in the Antarctic. She has since been to Tonga, where humpbacks breed and calf in winter months, to photograph them in the water. (Photo by Rita Kluge/The Guardian)

Documentary photographer William E. Crawford was one of the first Western photographers to gain access to North Vietnam after the war ended. He has photographed the capital, Hanoi, at regular intervals since 1985, concentrating on the colonial and indigenous architecture, urban details, landscapes and intimate portraits of people in their home settings, street scenes and the city’s surrounding countryside. Here: 54 Hàng Ga (Chicken Street), 1994. (Photo by William E. Crawford from the book “Hanoi Streets 1985-2015: In the Years of Forgetting”)

Photographer John Maher, once the drummer with punk bank Buzzcocks, travelled to the Outer Hebrides to photograph abandoned crofters’ cottages – many of which, like this one, have seemingly been untouched since. Here: “Peat Fire”. Taken in March 2013 on the east coast of Harris. The fire is from muir-burning, when farmers burn off grasses and heather to improve grazing for their sheep. (Photo by John Maher/The Guardian)

From stuffed elephants to picnics under power lines, Leipzig-born photographer Frank Herfort coaxes magical, colour-saturated tableaux from intriguing slices of everyday Russian life. Here: A lonely dog watches the mailboxes in a typical Moscow residential block. (Photo by by Frank Herfort/The Guardian)